In the wake of the e-mail scandal, the firing of studio head Amy Pascal and a summer that saw the company receive only a 3.9% market share of the box office (their biggest success was Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2), Sony badly needs a hit, so theyve pinned their hopes on this much-publicised all-female reboot. If you want a taste of how the movie will turn out, watch The Heat, director Paul Feigs previous attempt to put a female spin on familiar material. Described by Rolling Stone as a dead battery of a movie, the film is little more than a checklist of buddy cop movie clichés. Id like to say there were some surprises in this mismatched pairing, claimed The New York Daily News, but if youve seen Lethal Weapon, you know how it goes. The Heat made $230 million on a $43 million budget, and if Ghostbusters proves similarly successful, Sony has plans for Marvel-style cinematic universe that will also include TV shows as well as features involving an all-male ghostbusting team. Novel, that.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
