It's Official - Bill Murray Will Not Appear In Ghostbusters 3

Peter Venkman will not appear... not even as a ghost.

By Matt Aspin / August 2, 2012

Dust off those proton packs Ghost fans because Ghostbusters 3 could spook its way into production very soon. There's only one snag - and it's a biggie! Ghostbusters 3 will feature the original members alright, except for one - Dr Venkman. That's correct, Bill Murray will not appear... not even as a ghost. Murray has held out for years on appearing in a proposed GB threequel, often being the one cog in the wheel that just wouldn't budge and without him Columbia Pictures were never fully confident in making a third film. Whenever plans or even scripts for a new movie started to build again he would always be on hand to shoot them down and deny his involvement. Well it seems this time the gang just decided not to wait any longer and will cut Peter Venkman out of the script all together thinking it's now or never for GB 3.... something we said would happen when Murray basically called the script garbage back in June. We had figured that without Murray, Columbia would simply decide to reboot the Ghostbusters franchise with a brand new cast, possibly even just remaking the original however the film's producer, biggest cheerleader and co-star, Dan Aykroyd, spoke to Metro recently and (as well as confirming no Murray) said that he is confident a third movie will still be a success even without its most famous actor;

"It's sad but we're passing it on to a new generation. Ghostbusters 3 can be a successful movie without Bill. My preference would be to have him involved but at this point he doesn't seem to be coming and we have to move on. It's time to make the third one."

So what about a plot? Details are still non existent unfortunately but Aykroyd did once again confirm that the original 'busters will be passing the torch to a new generation.

"Yes, we've got a brilliant new writer on it and we'll be passing the torch on to a new generation. We're working on it to make it just right to satisfy our fans. I'm confident we'll be in production in the next year ... now we've got the studio on side. We've tried a few concepts which weren't right but now we've got a good structure and will make it happen."

The most we've got on character details were what Aykroyd said a few months back;

My character, Ray, is now blind in one eye and cant drive the cadillac, he said, Hes got a bad knee and cant carry the packs Egon is too large to get into the harness. We need young blood and thats the promise. Were gonna hand it to a new generation.

How do you feel about this latest development? Can Ghostbusters work without Murray/Venkman? Most importantly... will Sony even decide to go through with the film? Men in Black 3 writer Etan Cohen was recently brought on to fix the script in Murray's absence but there's no greenlight yet for the threequel and we wouldn't be surprised if Sony just decide to reboot the saga with younger faces...