Summer of '89 Part 3: The Hundred Million Dollar Disappointment

When last we left the summer of 1989, which I am admittedly behind on talking about at the moment, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was proving to be untouchable in terms of its box office success. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier had just debuted at number one, but was quickly fading en route what would be a record setting drop in business between a film's opening weekend and its second week of release. It was a dubious record that the William Shatner helmed film almost only hung on to for a single week.

No one ever would have expected this week's subject, Ghostbusters II, to fall so quickly. It all seemed like a very safe bet on paper. The sequel to what was the highest grossing comedy in history (until the release of The Hangover) was a modestly budgeted summer tent pole for a studio with an almost unlimited source of funds that were coming from a very generous parent company. It was a project where everyone involved simply wanted to create a sequel that captured some amount of the original film's joy and good will. In the crowded summer of 1989, it ended up becoming a warning shot for major studios that all the marketing and calculating in the world wasn't going to guarantee a blockbuster. In recent years, Ghostbusters II has become a small firestorm of debate over whether the film was a failure or not. In 1989, it became the first ever film to gross over a hundred million dollars and still be considered a disappointment. It wasn't a failure on an artistic level, per-say, but for a film that was designed by people who thought it would be the biggest box office draw of the year, it was a gross case of overestimation.

As always, an examination of the studio that made it and the genesis of the project is necessary for a better understanding of the curious situation of Ghostbusters II.


The Torch Bearers

On June 21st, 1982, Columbia Pictures became the first major motion picture studio to be bought by a megacorporation that had absolutely no ties to the production of any medium of entertainment whatsoever. Coca-Cola, the brand that was then controlling 85% of the soft drink market, shelled out $692 million in hopes that they could increase their profit margin by 10% with a stab at corporate synergy. Coke saw something valuable in owning a film studio because they believed that the studios were on the cutting edge of new media and Columbia brought a lot to the table in this respect.

At the time of Coke's purchase of the studio, Columbia wasn't exactly hurting for cash or on the verge of bankruptcy. They just weren't producing very many movies. Columbia had been making a majority of their profits in television. In 1980, bolstered by daytime soaps and the rights to numerous syndicated favourites, television programming accounted for $314 million of the $803 million dollars they made. Columbia produced such hits as Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless in house at the height of their popularity. Through their Screen Gems subdivision (which stands as a theatrical distributor today, as well) they controlled four of the top five syndicated television titles: Charlie's Angels, WKRP in Cincinnati, Bewitched, and The Flintstones.

While they were very comfortable with network television, their hesitance to embrace cable and home video was leaving them behind. Unlike their rivals at Paramount, Fox, Disney, and Universal, Columbia didn't have their own cable network. Instead of embracing home video as a new frontier, Columbia became the first major studio to dip their toe into the world of Pay-Per-View programming with the Premiere Channel, which lasted a little over a year and was axed after operating at a near $50 million loss.

Of main interest to Coca-Cola was the fact that next to television revenues, the second highest source of income for Columbia Pictures (at $288 million and change) came from the in house production of television commercials. Columbia, since the late 1970s, had been exclusively cutting together all the commercials for General Motors, Sears, and NBC. Coke knew that of all the major studios, Columbia would be the cheapest and most marketable one to go after. It was on stable financial ground and no other major studio had seemingly mastered the visual art of selling a product.

Coca-Cola chairman and CEO Roberto Goizueta loved to talk about the purchase of Columbia by using beverage related analogies:

"You can't be a national force in soft drinks without a syrup plant and in entertainment, you need a movie company."

"We believe the thirst we quench with our drinks is no greater than the thirst for entertainment."

Such seeming ignorance and outright incongruity for the business brings to light a key problem with the Coca-Cola purchase of Columbia. Coca-Cola was clearly not a media outlet. The distribution of a beverage was not equal to music licensing, publishing, or pay TV. But one thing that worked to Columbia's advantage was that Coca-Cola, one of the biggest corporations of any kind in the world, had very deep pockets and a lot of expendable income.

As soon as Coca-Cola took over, production on the film side of Columbia nearly quadrupled. In 1982 and 1985, Columbia released 21 films. Not combined. In each year. And that was just Columbia PROPER. Those numbers don't even include films produced by the Columbia subdivision of Tri-Star or their distribution of films made through a partnership with the still independent New Line Cinema.

In 1983, Columbia entered into a partnership with CBS and HBO to create Tri-Star Pictures. Posited as its own company and poised to become the 8th major studio at the time, Tri-Star was not merely a genre subdivision of a larger company. Unfortunately for Columbia and everyone else involved, Tri-Star only had three of its first twelve releases turn profits (The Natural, The Muppets Take Manhattan, and Places in the Heart). CBS got cold feet and backed out, but HBO stuck around... somewhat.

In a somewhat historic deal in late 1984, the same year the original Ghostbusters debuted, HBO sold back their stake in Tri-Star to Columbia in exchange for something unprecedented. One full year after a Columbia or Tri-Star release debuted in theatres, it would debut exclusively on HBO. No other studio up until that point had ever agreed to such an agreement with a pay cable network. Retroactive to their releases, all of the formerly failed Tri-Star releases became profitable through the HBO agreement. No film released by Tri-Star would be a financial loser until the release of Rambo III in 1988. The beauty of that being that Columbia barely even put up any of the money for the actual production of what was then the most expensive motion picture ever made. Most of Rambo III was privately funded by Andrew Vajna and Mario Kassar's Carolco production company.

The relationship between Coca-Cola and Columbia was working quite well for the first couple of years, but things would turn considerably more bitter and acrimonious just past the halfway point of the decade. For what it's worth, Coca-Cola would give Columbia Pictures the biggest blockbuster they ever had, and in 1984 they proved they could be actual contenders in an ever changing marketplace.


Who You Gonna Call?

The making of the original Ghostbusters film is a topic that has been covered in tremendous detail in numerous forms of media before this piece. Many of the sources for the making of Ghostbusters come directly from the mouths of the people involved in the making of it. I offer up what is essentially the Cliff Notes version, but I urge anyone who is interested to look into any of the sources I used for this piece or the fairly comprehensive special features on the Blu-ray for the film. Since there is information that is pertinent to an understanding of the crafting of the sequel, I am going to give you all the "five cent tour."



The original script for Ghostbusters was drafted by actor Dan Aykroyd, a noted and avid enthusiast of all things paranormal in nature, shortly after his work on The Blues Brothers. It was written as a megabudget outer space set action-comedy-thriller that would co-star his friend and frequent collaborator John Belushi. The pair would play paranormal bounty hunters with the ability to transcend time and space. It would take place on different astral planes with the Ghostbusters almost acting like the Green Lantern corps (only if the interplanetary police force was made up of private contractors that all hated each other).

Blues Brothers director John Landis passed on the project as he thought it was simply unfilmable. Up and coming director Joe Dante would also pass for similar reasons. Universal wanted nothing to do with Aykroyd's script because The Blues Brothers was already one big budget nightmare they had been through. Ghostbusters was going to cost at least three times what Blues Brothers did, and that was one of the most expensive films ever made.

Sadly, Belushi would pass away from a drug overdose while Aykroyd was shopping the script around to potential studios. The first person to show an interest in the project as it stood was actor Bill Murray. The former Saturday Night Live alum read his old castmate's script and thought the whole idea was crazy enough to work. Murray was more than willing to step into the sidekick role and was particularly taken by two things from Aykroyd's pitch that would become iconographic: the Ghostbusters corporate logo and the design of the Ghostbusters' uniforms.

Aykroyd brought his script to producer and director Ivan Reitman at the suggestion of Murray. Reitman, whom Aykroyd had known only in passing and by reputation through actors and comics working in Toronto, was on a bit of a hot streak after having produced National Lampoon's Animal House and having directed Murray in the sleeper hit Meatballs. Reitman saw the germ of a good idea in Aykroyd's script, but agreed with previous assessments that it was patently unfilmable as is.

Reitman would make many of the key decisions that would turn Ghostbusters into a marketable property. Reitman suggested first and foremost that the action be toned down for budgetary reasons. By many accounts, Aykroyd's original draft called for an effects laden action sequence every four or five pages out of a 129 page draft. Instead of having ghostbusting be an already established profession like it was in the original draft, Reitman thought the film should be an origin story about the nature of the job. The film would be much more accepted if it took place on Earth in a single North American city and with real people doing real things that audiences could relate to. Reitman encouraged Aykroyd to leave in all the heady paranormal concepts that he deeply believed in, but he needed to make it all more accessible to studios and average audiences.

Reitman also suggested that Aykroyd collaborate on the impending rewrite with SCTV and fellow Second City alum Harold Ramis, the director of Caddyshack (which he also wrote) and National Lampoon's Vacation and the writer of Stripes and Animal House. While both men knew comedy, Ramis would bring the reality to a script that really needed it.

Murray was still on board should the film get made thanks to his previous work with Ramis and Reitman. Of the four principals of the series, Murray was the only person with no say in the writing process. He was actually off filming his first dramatic role in The Razor's Edge, a passion project of Murray's, when the final draft was submitted. Not that it really made any difference. Reitman, Aykroyd, and Ramis all knew that Murray was one of the most talented improvisationalists working. If Murray thought it would be funny to make something up on the spot, no one was really going to stop him.



Reitman first approached Frank Mancuso Sr. at Paramount with the completed script, but was turned down. He then took the script to a very enthusiastic Frank Price, then CEO and chairman of Columbia Pictures, who loved what he read so much that he essentially pressed the panic button and sent the film into almost immediate production. Flush with Coca-Cola money, Price didn't balk at Reitman's $25 million budget and essentially let Reitman and company do whatever they wanted with one important caveat. Ghostbusters, which was greenlit in March of 1983, had to be ready for release by the summer of 1984. Price was already in danger of losing his job. Coke wanted a hit and Columbia had nothing scheduled that would ever be able to compete with Paramount's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or Warner Brothers' Gremlins. Price wouldn't stick around long enough at Columbia to see the release of Ghostbusters, but his instincts were spot on.



Ghostbusters helped give Columbia its best market share of any year in the 1980s. In 1984, they finished second only to Paramount, but the cultural relevancy of Ghostbusters led to an even bigger windfall in terms of ancillary sales. Worldwide Ghostbusters took in close to $400 million at the box office alone and in some markets beat out Temple of Doom as the biggest film of the year. No one was technically under contract for a sequel, but as early as Ghostbusters' opening weekend people were talking about it. Financially it all made perfect sense, and while the majority of the cast and crew didn't fully object to a sequel, no one was more hesitant and hateful towards the idea of a Ghostbusters sequel than the man who would replace Frank Price as the head of Columbia.




The Killing Fields

"Artists and those who work for them have a high moral responsibility to the audience." - David Puttnam, Columbia chairman and CEO at a 1986 British Press luncheon


In late 1984, British film producer David Puttnam was brought in to replace Frank Price as the chairman of Columbia Pictures. By September 1986, he would add CEO to his job title. Puttnam had gained numerous critical notices and awards for his work on The Killing Fields, Local Hero, and Best Picture winner Chariots of Fire. Puttnam saw himself as an "artist" in the truest sense of the word and felt that no matter the circumstances, films should always be about quality first and never about the money. Needless to say, Puttnam didn't last very long at Columbia and he was seen by his corporate overlords at Coca-Cola as being antagonistic, impossible to work with, and with harbouring an anachronistic view of how Hollywood works. Why Puttnam was hired is still anyone's guess as no one has ever gone on record to fully take credit or spell out why a "prestige" filmmaker was given the reigns to a major studio in the first place.

From the moment Puttnam entered Columbia, the sequel hating CEO never caved to pressure to make follow-ups to the three biggest hits in the Columbia library: Jagged Edge, The Karate Kid, and Ghostbusters. Ultimately, a sequel to Karate Kid was out of his hands as the agreement to make a follow-up was finalized a scant six hours before Puttnam was hired. It didn't stop Puttnam from firing everyone who bankrolled the film. It didn't stop Puttnam from openly bashing his studio's own film in the press. It also didn't stop Karate Kid II from outgrossing the original film and from putting pressure on Puttnam to make a third entry.

Puttnam's undying hatred of sequels even extended to films over on the Tri-Star side which were usually funded largely by outside interests, especially the Rambo sequel, First Blood Part II. Puttnam started a nasty war of words with Sylvester Stallone and Carolco by saying that if he knew the film was going to be profitable, Columbia never would have released it.

Along with his aversion to sequels, Puttnam had a hatred for "star packages," films that were brought to a studio by an agent with a star and director already attatched. The most notorious star package Puttnam passed on was the Norman Jewison/Cher vehicle Moonstruck, which would ultimately revive a fledgling MGM and win numerous awards. The awards didn't matter to Puttnam. It was all "big budget hokum." He was never repentant in his ways, and as a result, Columbia rarely landed any truly big films during his tenure.

A major thorn in the side of Puttnam was the $45 million, four years in production albatross that was Ishtar. Production on the Elaine May directed desert based road film with Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman was too costly to pull the plug on before a single frame of film was even shot thanks to play or pay agreements with the three primary participants. The failure of Ishtar would become synonymous with Hollywood greed and excess, but Puttnam was entirely blameless. Ishtar, which did debut at number one when released but only by a scant $5,000 over Canadian horror import The Gate in the closest margin of victory in box office history, started production before he took the job, and it proved Puttnam's point that star vehicles were evil.



To some degree, Puttnam saw a Ghostbusters sequel as something that was sadly a foregone conclusion, but it would never go forward unless his personal demands were met. Puttnam insisted that the film be made cheaper than the original and with an all new cast or the film would not be made at all. Ghostbusters II in his eyes had become a star vehicle thanks to Hollywood super agent Michael Ovitz.

Ovitz, the head of the Creative Artists Agency, wasn't quite the king of the world in 1986, but he was well on his way. Ovitz and his agency laid claim to most of the biggest talents in Hollywood. Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman, Michael Douglas, Sylvester Stallone, Steven Spielberg. All Ovitz clients. Going into the first Ghostbusters film Ovitz already claimed Reitman, Murray, and Ramis as clients. Aykroyd became an Ovitz client in the writing stages. Sigourney Weaver joined CAA during the production. Ovitz laid claim to fourth Ghostbuster Ernie Hudson and Rick Moranis shortly after the release of the film. Ovitz had the full Ghostbusters play set and Puttnam wouldn't let him do anything fun with it.



The underlying irony in all this is that Puttnam, in conjunction with parent company Coca-Cola, created one of the biggest, most ego driven failures of all time with no help from any agents. Puttnam greenlit the largely, and VERY obviously Coke funded Bill Cosby debacle Leonard Part 6. Coca-Cola saw the film as a great piece of corporate synergy that would team the film side of their empire with the biggest corporate spokesperson their primary product had.



Puttnam could never distance himself from just how terrible Leonard Part 6 turned out because he was personally invested in the project every step of the way. As written on the page, Puttnam thought the film was a bit of a kindred spirit. It was a "farce" of a big budget spy film (Puttnam was, as you might have guessed, and outspoken opponent of the James Bond franchise while in the UK) that "spoofed" franchise filmmaking by creating a sequel to a film that never existed in the first place. In a further bit of personal involvement that smacks of cronyism, Puttnam hand picked British TV director Paul Weiland to direct because he thought a British sensibility would suit the film well and play well alongside the work of Cosby.



What Puttnam ended up with was an astoundingly unfunny film with no sensibility whatsoever that managed to alienate the film's star to a great degree. Cosby hated it so much that he directly and knowingly took a page out of Puttnam's own playbook and openly trashed the film on late night talk shows and in the press, begging people not to go to his movie. When the film cleaned up at the Razzie awards for 1987, Cosby showed up and was certain to thank David Puttnam for all his help.



Puttnam had only one film during his entire tenure that was both a critical and financial success. The Last Emperor was a Best Picture winner and the highest grossing film in the career of director Bernardo Bertolucci. Actually, that wasn't even his success. Columbia was merely the distributor of the film and there was really no risk or huge profit involved. In fact, the very prestige films that might have led to Coca-Cola hiring Puttnam in the first place proved to be his downfall.

During his tenure, Puttnam turned Columbia from a company that was making a $700 million profit to one that lost nearly $300 million. Putnam was fired in December of 1987 and replaced by Dawn Steel, but Puttnam's increased production of artsier fare hurt Columbia all the way through the end of 1989. The Beast, Me and Him (which was about a talking penis), Little Nikita, True Believer, and Hope and Glory were all costly failures Puttnam was responsible for that weren't completed or released until after his departure. Another troubled Puttnam production was also on its way to becoming the biggest box office money loser of all time: Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Charles Kipps of Variety, in a piece written shortly after Puttnam's ouster, effectively breaks down what Puttnam did to Coca-Cola:

"At twenty-five cents a pop on the wholesale market - about twelve cents profit - the soft drink maker would have to sell over two billion bottles of Coke to offset a $270,000,000 loss. Add a requisite couple hundred million for prints and advertising and Coke might have to increase that to four billion units."

Frank Price, Puttnam's predecessor, chimed in during the same piece:

"A 20 million dollar picture with names has less risk than a 10 million dollar picture without names. You have tangible aspects - video, foreign sales, and so on - with major actors and directors. Without them there is a huge risk and you can lose all the money. In fact, you probably will."

Almost the very second that Puttnam was out the door, the multiyear wait for a Ghostbusters sequel (as well as a third Karate Kid film) was over, but the spectre of Puttnam would loom large over the production of what was supposed to be a sure thing, and by the time we reach the conclusion, it will be apparent that it still hangs over the entire potential franchise today.


I Guess We're Gonna Have to Take Control

At the same luncheon that gave us the David Puttnam quote that started the last section, Puttnam was expressly asked about Ghostbusters and an offhanded remark was made about how much he didn't appreciate the film's biggest star, Bill Murray.

"[He is] an actor who makes millions off his movies, but gives nothing back to his art. He's a taker."

Murray honestly couldn't have given a fuck less since he was already planning on holding out on any sort of Ghostbusters sequel for his own more personal reasons. The combination of not being prepared for superstardom and the failure of his personal passion, The Razor's Edge, made Murray take an extended break from acting. For four years, Murray lived just outside of Paris and was perfectly content to not work.



Murray returned to the screen to film the Christmas themed black comedy Scrooged, written by his friend and former SNL writer Mitch Glazer. What was originally supposed to be a pitch black anti-Christmas comedy, ended up being a film that Murray would loudly badmouth after the release of the film. Murray blames Paramount and director Richard Donner for softening the more horrific elements of Glazer's script in favour of the kind of effects laden blockbuster that he was trying to get away from. In an interview conducted shortly before shooting began on Ghostbusters II, a thoroughly exhausted Murray was asked if he would ever work with Richard Donner again, to which he replied "Over my dead, lifeless body." He may or may not have been joking. Such is the enigma that is Bill Murray.



During production on the physically demanding Scrooged (another aspect of that production that Murray wasn't prepared to deal with), Murray received a phone call from Dan Aykroyd. The story for Ghostbusters II was ready and Michael Ovitz wanted to bring everyone together for lunch to discuss the next step. Murray audibly sighed into the phone and said: "Well, fuck it. I'm here now, anyway."

Murray's flippancy and slight annoyance did mask a certain happiness to be working with familiar faces again. The experience of making the first Ghostbusters never soured him on the idea of a sequel. Plus, anything was going to be better than Scrooged which Murray went on record saying he "carried" by himself.

Aykroyd had the plot of Ghostbusters II hashed out since the spring of 1985, but Putnam refused to read anything. Ramis was busy on other projects and Aykroyd was hesitant to bring him on if there was a chance the film would never be made. Since Columbia owned the rights to all Ghostbusters films in perpetuity, Aykroyd couldn't exactly shop the idea around, either.

Ovitz lined the hotel conference room in Santa Barbara with various merchandise and memorabilia from the first film to emphasize nostalgia and drive home the point that Ghostbusters II was going to mean an enormous pay day for everyone involved. Ovitz had known the financial implications of a sequel for years. The CAA had commissioned numerous focus groups and telephone surveys aimed at average filmgoers. Over the past several years, if Ovitz and his number crunchers were correct, a Ghostbusters sequel would make upwards of $280 million in the United States alone.



What was supposed to be a simple lunch turned into a seven hour marathon where a lot of dirty financial laundry needed to be aired. Ramis and Aykroyd were put off by the large back end (profit sharing) deals that Ovitz got for Murray and Reitman on the first film. (We will explore back end deals in far more detail with Batman next time.) Murray simply wanted more money. Reitman, in addition to wanting more money, wanted an entirely new contract to ensure that someone like David Puttnam could never interfere with his potential franchise ever again.

Not present at the meeting, but still in need of appeasement were the other three main faces from the original film. Ernie Hudson didn't want more money (necessarily), but he did want a bigger part as his character was now implied to be a full fledged member of the Ghostbuster team. Rick Moranis needed a much smaller role that could be largely filmed separately from the leads since he was already in production on two other films slated for release in the summer of 1989: Disney's tent pole Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (opening a week after Ghostbusters and alongside Batman, causing Moranis to back out of any press for Ghostbusters II) and Universal's Parenthood. Sigourney Weaver, who never really got along famously with Murray on set, was also due for a more naturally occurring pay raise thanks to the Oscar buzz surrounding her nomination for Aliens and the upcoming nod for Gorillas in the Mist.

The financials all worked themselves out relatively easily and in a way that the now cash strapped Columbia could bring the film in at a slightly bigger budget than the original. Pretty much everyone got what they wanted. Murray, Aykroyd, and Ramis all agreed to appear in the film for scale with huge back end deals. Aykroyd and Ramis, in addition to writing fees, would receive 6.4% of Ghostbusters II profits. Murray would see 15% of the profits and no other paycheck other than scale rate. Weaver, Moranis, and Hudson all got increased pay, but no back end deals. Reitman cut his salary in half and got the same 6.4% as Ramis and Aykroyd, and got his new contract, arguably coming out of the meeting as the biggest victor. Thanks to these deals, the budget of Ghostbusters II was set at a reasonable $30 million, only $5 million more than the original.

So much time was spent discussing financials that no one really wanted to talk about Aykroyd's story, which had once again remained unchecked by anyone. The plot of the film remained mainly intact. The Ghostbusters became shells of their former selves, reduced to hosting public television shows and dressing up for children's birthday parties. They are called back into action by a wave of literal negativity that had been oozing under the streets of New York City. The character of Vigo the Carpathian, an evil painting that wants to come to life, was originally supposed to possess Dan Aykroyd's character of Ray for a large chunk of the film, causing Ray to sabotage the Ghostbusters and terrorize the city. Aykroyd had envisioned the character of art gallery owner Janosz (played by Peter MacNicol) as being Dana's ex-husband and father of her newborn child. He also saw Rick Moranis' character of Louis Tully as being trained by the remaining Ghostbusters as Ray's replacement.





Reitman wasn't entirely keen on the story. He preferred seeing the Ghostbusters as a unit and not divided. He also thought Aykroyd's take was too heady and dark, and it often became preachy regarding areas where religion and the paranormal intersect. The abundance of action sequences in Aykroyd's draft again detracted from the pacing and comedy of the film. Ramis and Reitman reworked the script with Aykroyd with all of them agreeing to keep things as simple as possible and similar in tone to the original. Many of Aykroyd's original ideas still made the final film, but most of them are at the very beginning or shoehorned into the final act.

Dana's husband was also changed at the behest of studio chair Dawn Steel who thought the film needed more comedic relief in the wake of the suddenly largely unavailable Moranis. The result being an often maddeningly inconsistent backstory for Weaver's character that no one really had time to go back and fix before a writer's strike hit and the film had to go into production.

The other major thing that Steel and Columbia wanted was more action. Steel actually quite preferred Aykroyd's original treatment and wanted a lot of the action sequences that Reitman and Ramis jettisoned put back into the film. Knowing that the summer of 1989 was shaping up to be the summer of sequels and spectacles, the studio heads wanted more action and more special effects in their films almost across the board. Reitman caved mostly because he knew that unlike the original film, which was largely a quickie production, he would have an extra six months to pull everything together.

The shooting on the film itself was largely boring and uneventful for everyone except Reitman and the effects department. The cast got along as well as they did before with no huge conflicts. The jokes on paper and in dailies seemed as funny as the original. Ghostbusters II was most assuredly going to be a return to a winning formula, but in on set interviews, the cast didn't seem to be particularly engaged with Ramis and Murray in particular knowing that they were making a film that was more of a product than a piece of original entertainment.

"The only real fun is the acting part of it. The rest has so many negatives to it." - Bill Murray in Rolling Stone, 1 June 1989

"Some comedies satisfy the requirements of art and some are gratuitous pandering. We're somewhere in between." - Harold Ramis, Rolling Stone, 1 June 1989

"To make another Ghostbusters just to make money, you just wouldn't feel good about it. You'd feel creepy. You can exploit the ghostbusters because you've got a sort of built-in powerhouse going, as long as you think of it not as a way to make more money and sell more toys or cereal or whatever the hell, but as a framework to work within. You know you've got an interest built in. There are people who want to see this thing and we have some ideas that will fit in. You can see how it can work." - Bill Murray, Marquee Magazine, May 1989





While the cast was going through the paces in a largely autonomous fashion, Reitman had his hands full. With much of the special effects team from the first film hard at work on other 1989 projects like Indiana Jones (on the digital side) and Batman (on the practical side), many of the big, new set pieces Columbia wanted just weren't working out as well as Reitman had hoped. The new scenes just weren't scary enough or funny enough. Many of these sequences were cut after only being partially filmed or were worked into smaller montages.



The cuts largely didn't matter to Columbia as they knew they were going to get what they paid for. They had their Ghostbusters sequel that they waited almost five year to get off the ground and they felt as if they could genuinely defeat the more iconic brand names of Indiana Jones and Batman. Indy was losing steam and Batman was a high risk gamble for Warner Brothers. The summer plan for Columbia was simple: release Ghostbusters II and the low risk Karate Kid III in June in the weeks around Batman and not to worry about coming up with anything else.



Warner Brothers and Batman had already staked out all the best places for billboard and print advertising for the summer and two Prince songs from the Batman soundtrack were already in heavy radio rotation as early as late April. Columbia tapped a then fresh faced Bobby Brown to counter the Batman soundtrack with a new single titled "On Our Own," but Brown was no Prince and the single underperformed.



The biggest promotional edge that Columbia had over Batman was the Ghostbusters cast; a crew of comedians who would charm television talk show viewers and newspaper and magazine readers alike. From Johnny Carson to Oprah Winfrey, theme shows were built around the Ghostbusters cast and crew. The onslaught of promotion was inescapable on television. Cover stories about Ghostbusters II ran in almost every major industry publication from Rolling Stone to Cinefex. If Batman's backers, John Peters and Peter Guber, were going to dominate the line of sight in everyday America, Columbia was going to give the public infotainment.



While Columbia was worried about Batman dominating Ghostbusters' second week of release, they thought their film would have legs, or the ability to drum up consistent, if slightly diminishing business. Their increased production schedule had yielded nothing but losses for the past three years. Ghostbusters II was Columbia's last chance to prove to Coke that they were on the front lines of the new media wave.

The content of the film was never Columbia's biggest concern. The biggest concern for them was that no one was sure if nostalgia for the first film was going to be enough to sell the sequel. Except Weaver, who was undoubtedly a second banana here but to this day remains the only actress other than Angelina Jolie who could sell an action film to a largely male audience, none of the leads had a hit in years. Coming off his four year sabbatical, Murray's Scrooged did well, but not THAT well. Aykroyd proved time and again that he couldn't open a film with failures like Spies Like Us and Doctor Detroit. Ramis had only gotten story credit on one flop and directed another one (Armed and Dangerous and Club Paradise, respectively) since Ghostbusters. Nostalgia for the old was going to have to sell a film that was promising audiences more of the same. The actual star power Ovitz had espoused to the studio was suddenly a cause for concern.




The Business

Budget: $30 million
Opening Weekend: $29.5 million, largest non-holiday opening weekend in history (at the time)
Percent drop in business in second week: 53%, second largest weekend drop in history (at the time, set the previous week by Star Trek V: The Final Frontier's 56% drop)
Final Domestic Box Office Gross: $112 million
Total Back End Profits (made by cast, director, producers, and agents): $46 million
Total Advertising and Marketing Costs: $35 million
Total Domestic Profit: $1 million
Screened in Toronto at York (THX), Market Square, Showcase, Fairview (THX), Humber

What the Critics Said

"The marketing boys have been at the script somewhere along the line, and the curious stab at sincerity in the finale rings utterly false... There are sequels which can overcome the taint of commercial calculation that hangs over them. This is not among those films." - John Harkness, NOW Toronto

"Ghostbusters 2 has a goofy, silly innocence, a perfect summery giddiness as frail and lovely as gossamer." - Bruce Blackadar, Toronto Star





What Bill Murray Said

"I made a sequel, and it's hard, it's really hard to make a sequel, no matter how sincere you are, how much you want to try. Somehow the directors take over from the writers and the comedians, and the thing ends up being a lot more action than comedy. Action is a lot easier to direct than comedy. It used to be that if a movie opened up and did a couple of million on its opening weekend, that was a big deal. It's not like that anymore. They do these big TV buys now. They spend so much money, it's really scary. We're going to spend $3 million on Monday. It's like an army invasion. And when the movies open, all the papers print charts showing which movie grossed the most that weekend. I don't know why, because in theory only a couple of studios are going to profit from releasing that kind of information. And I don't know why they print it -- if they think it's news, or they think it makes people interested in movies." - interview with Roger Ebert dated 13 July 1990


Matt Brown Remembers

Ghostbusters 2, though, was probably the key point of my education. I remember coming home after seeing that movie – probably at one of the two theatres that no longer exist at St. Clair and Yonge – and when my parents asked me if it was good, saying “Yeah” with such unenthusiasm that no one was fooled, even myself. Ghostbusters 2 is a grim, grimy, utterly unfunny, utterly unenthusiastic sequel. It just isn’t fun to watch, introducing uncomfortable complications like the between-films dissolution of Peter and Dana’s relationship, and Dana’s bastard son Oscar, for reasons I now know to be clumsy-headed plot-building, but which at the time just felt like scenes from a completely different movie airlifted into something I was supposed to enjoy. Likewise, the Ghostbusters had been drummed out of New York City for having saved it in Ghostbusters 1, a note of dark comedy which I can appreciate as an adult but which is utterly lost on a 12-year-old boy. It was, and is, a thoroughly depressing movie. And the film ends with a duplication of the original film’s climax so precise that even at that age, I knew I was being spoon-fed warmed-over oatmeal. What a stupid film.

Ghostbusters 2, like many of the sequels that summer, was a product of studio arrogance, and a bygone time. When a movie didn’t have enormous tentpole competition and could count on a platform release keeping it in theatres for four to six months instead of four to six weeks, maybe it seemed like a safer bet to make weak-ass sequel property and shovel it into the multiplexes for every single customer of the original film to purportedly enjoy. And compared to a lot of other bombs in the history of the world, Ghostbusters 2 did pretty well, all things considered, at the box office. But boy, it is such an exceptionally shame-faced film that it has actually stopped the recent development of Ghostbusters 3 dead in a very personal, very honest way: Bill Murray is so particularly ashamed of the phoning-it-in-ness of Ghostbusters 2 that he has, as of yet, refused to even read the script for the new film.

But there was that horrible lesson in it, for me: the lesson that movies could be not good. I guess it took me a surprisingly long time to come around to this fact, but I just loved movies so much when I was a kid that coming upon one that I knew, instinctively, didn’t work, was something I was actually unequipped to articulate. I didn’t know movies had a “not good” option on the polling machine, until I saw Ghostbusters 2 (or later that year, Back to the Future 2). It took a while before I could admit to others, or even to myself, that something that was part of my family of movie heroes could be disappointing or even poor. Ghostbusters 2 kicked off my disillusionment.

CinemaScope's Adam Nayman Doesn't Remember

"There was a Ghostbusters 2?" - joking email response to me when asking local critics their thoughts about doing a Defending the Indefensible screening of Ghostbusters II

Reactions from the Toronto Underground Cinema staff when I said I am officially choosing Ghostbusters II as a Defending the Indefensible title

"No fucking way. That movie's just as good as the first. It's not indefensible if it made $112 million in 1989 money!" - Alex Woodside, manager



"There are scenes in Ghostbusters II that outdo scenes from the first film. The courtroom scene in the second film is better than almost any of the effects pieces in the first film. It's an 80s sequel. What more do you want?" - Charlie Lawton, manager

"It doesn't belong. You're out of your fucking mind." - Morgan White, dirctor/creator The Rep

What commentors on Twitter stated back in October when the Underground screened a double bill of Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II (names omitted)

"I'm definitely taking the fuck off after the first one."

"OMG. I can't wait! Never saw GB2 on the big screen, but it has a bad rep."

"Ghostbusters 2 SUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKSSSS."

"You couldn't have found a better Bill Murray movie to run after the original?"
"Does it still have Peter Venkman in it? Then we are all good. Ghostbusters 2 rocks."

"Well, it's not the first film, but at least it's funny."

"This movie sucks ass. Same with Men In Black II and Star Wars Episode 1. How could they fuck it so badly?!?"

"Ghostbusters 2 just gets shit because the original was so good that nothing could really surpass it. It's not a bad movie."

Andy Says

I genuinely like Ghostbusters II. I really do. It certainly isn't as original as its predecessor, but it is funny and it doesn't make the audience hate itself for liking it. So take everything I say with a grain of salt.

Look at the numbers and some of the nastier comments and reviews and tell me again that Ghostbusters II wasn't a failure. Logically there is no way you can make me believe that this film was as big of a success as some of the film's most ardent defenders seem to think it is. Ovitz couldn't have been further off in his estimations and the deals made to get the film into production in the first place let to a "profit" of one million dollars before taking into account print costs and shipping. The deal that Columbia made with HBO and home video put Ghostbusters II firmly in the black (overseas the film tanked and made less than $20 million, getting destroyed by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), but that in no way undercuts what a critical and financial misfire the film was on its theatrical release.

(While on the topic, many people have suggested that Ghostbusters II made a profit based on licensing fees and toy sales. It is a well documented, but not very often discussed fact that no Ghostbusters spin off product ever turned a large profit. The backlog of Ghostbusters merchandise was so bad that Columbia commissioned the animated television series The Real Ghostbusters, simply as a way to re-purpose and sell off backstock. The cartoon was such a hit that it spawned its own vastly more successful toy line. The animated toy line outsold proper Ghostbusters II toys in 1989 by a rate of 3 to 1.)

Ghostbusters II was a film literally made by committee with the goal of generating the most money possible, and they failed in every conceivable way.

I included that litany of quotes to illustrate the somewhat visceral reactions that people seem to have when it comes to this film. This is what I have been dealing with every single time the film is brought up in conversation. Many people love the film. Heck, I don't love the film, but I really enjoy watching it. Several friends were downright offended that I would ever think of choosing Ghostbusters II as a candidate for my Defending the Indefensible series.

On the other side of the equation, a lot of people, including fans of the first film, detest Ghostbusters II. They decried the film as a piece of crap upon its release in much the same way that people were up in arms about the more recent sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean and Transformers. They are just seen as lazy retreads of the same film simply designed to take money away from the viewer.

The biggest parallel between 1989 and today can be found when comparing Ghostbusters II to The Hangover Part II. It seems only fitting that Ghostbusters be compared to the film that bested it as the highest grossing comedy of all time. Both films are easily distilled pieces of high concept filmmaking. They both keep the plot structure of the original film and simply change a handful of key details. Both films are lauded and hated in the same ways. For as many people who thought the films gave them what they wanted, just as many seem to think of them as lazy cash-ins. (Although, unlike Ghostbusters II, I hate The Hangover Part II far more than the original, but that is a story for another time.)

Take this as an official announcment:

The July 28th Defending the Indefensible screening of Jennfer's Body is now postponed until later in the fall. Instead, following Equilibrium, at 7pm, will be Ghostbusters II at 9:15pm. The film will include a discussion between myself, Matt Brown (who will be attacking the film), and Torontoist's John Semley (who will be defending it, and was the only critic other than NOW's Norman Wilner with anything nice to say about the film) discussing the merits of such a sequel.

It is being paired with Equilibrium for a very good reason. Both films were failures upon their release and are loved and hated with an equal amount of energy. Both films are ones that I was cheered for selecting by some and vilified by others who have no clue why these films are "indefensible." One film I happen to like and the other film I happen to detest. And on July 28th, the day after my birthday, I look forward to never having to talk about either of them ever again.



Conclusion

By November of 1989, Coca-Cola was officially done with their experiment with film production. They sold Columbia Pictures to electronics giant Sony for $3.4 billion. At their year end shareholders meeting the very next month, Columbia Pictures was never mentioned. Not a single word.

Sony wasted no time imprinting their own style of corporate synergy by incorporating a nice bit of product placement in the 1990 Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro film Awakenings. A scene in the film finds Williams' character looking at the first ever High Definition television, a Sony Trinitron. The scene that features the television was also the first ever sequence in a major motion picture to be filmed in HD video. Unlike their partnership with Coca-Cola, at least Sony could provide Columbia with the tools necessary to move closer to "the cutting edge" Coke could never bring them to with a mere soft drink and a lot of cash.

In 1991, Coca-Cola would cross paths with an increasingly powerful Michael Ovitz in a historic deal. Ovitz became the agent for the entire Coca-Cola brand. It was the first time a major corporation was represented by a single agent for all matters regarding product placement and commercials.

Ovitz continued as the head of the CAA until 1995 when he was offered the job of president at Disney. He lasted there until January 1997 following a lack of productivity that Ovitz blamed on a poor outlining of his duties. He hasn't held a position of great power in Hollywood since, but in the case of ever seeing another Ghostbusters sequel, his shadow still looms large.

Many people seem to believe that the increasingly mercurial Bill Murray is the reason that a Ghostbusters sequel hasn't happened yet. While it is true that the sequel left a bad taste in Murray's mouth and a multi year fall out with Harold Ramis didn't help matters, he has actually been more receptive and excited by the idea of a sequel in recent years (albeit, only if his participation in a third film is diminished in capacity). He, in his usual fashion, goes back and forth as to whether or not the film will actually happen, In truth, there is a much bigger stumbling block to overcome than Murray.

There is a very good reason why Columbia only has two releases this summer with Bad Teacher and Zookeeper. (Attack the Block and Friends With Benefits come courtesy of their Screen Gems subdivision and even then they are only the distributor of the former.) Ghostbusters III seemed like a done deal and Sony cleared the release schedule accordingly. The film was set to take the aging Ghostbusters and have them train a new cast of comedic actors to that their place. 500 Days of Summer director Marc Webb was attached to direct and everything seemed to be in place until someone other than Murray played their trump card and Webb was assigned to helm next year's Spider-man reboot.

Ivan Reitman is the main reason we may never see another Ghostbusters film. The new contract alluded to from the Ghostbusters II negotiations included a clause that someone like David Putnam couldn't make a cheaper Ghostbusters film with a different cast. In his Ghostbusters II contract it states that no one other than Reitman is allowed to direct a Ghostbusters film. Furthermore, the contract states that Reitman will not make another Ghostbusters film if Murray, Aykroyd, and Ramis are not directly involved. This would be fine if Columbia were to just make one final film, but they are adamant on reviving the entire franchise for a new generation. Reitman has effectively taken away Sony's ability to rebrand the Ghostbusters. For better, or worse.


At the Bell

There are a lot of key questions to think about here that everyone will have different answers to. Was David Puttnam right to hold off on a sequel? Do you agree with his ethics or think he was an egotistical madman? Was it possible that Columbia waited too long as a result to follow through on a Ghostbusters sequel? Is it really better to keep a sequel simple instead of upping the stakes, or does it breed contempt with the audience? What constitutes a good deal for a studio when making such a film? Are star packages and back end deals inherently evil or do they work for a greater good? How does all of this tie into the summer we currently find ourselves in with the proliferation of sequels? I can't answer these questions for you. Much like the film, you simply have to puzzle it out in your own mind with your own logic.

Prizes Added to the Prize Cache

A set of original Ghostbusters II lobby cards from 1989.

Next Week

Where does he get those wonderful toys. Batman gets released. Shit gets real.

Sources

Books

Block, Alex Ben, ed., Blockbusting, Harper Collins, 2010

Carter, Bill, The Late Shift, Hyperion, 1994

Litwak, Mark, Reel Power, Silman-James Press, 1986

McDonald, Paul, ed., The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry, Blackwell Press, 2008

Prince, Stephen, American Cinema of the 1980s, Rutgers University Press, 2007

Prince, Stephen, History of the American Cinema Volume 10: Hollywood Under the Electronic Rainbow, 1980-1989, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2000

Puttnam, David, Movies and Money, Knopf, 1998

Shay, Don, ed., Making Ghostbusters, Zoetrope, 1985

Singular, Stephen, Power to Burn, Carol Publishing Group, 1996

Slater, Robert, Ovitz, McGraw Hill, 1997

Squire, Jason E. ed., The Movie Business Book, Third Edition, Simon & Schuster, 2004

Yule, Andrew, Fast Fade: David Puttnam, Columbia Pictures, and the Battle for Hollywood, Delta, 1989

TV Shows and Films

The Oprah Winfrey Show - Airdate: 9 June 1989

The Tonight Show - Airdate: 12 June 1989

Ghostbusters 2 Electronic Press Kit

Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters 2

Leonard Part 6

Scrooged

Awakenings

Magazines and Newspapers

Bart, Peter, "The Ride and Demise of David the Didactic", Variety, 22 June 1997

Bernard, Jami, "Prime Slime With Ghostbusters", Fangoria, Issue #84, July 1989

Collins, Keith, "A Tale of Two Chairs", Variety, 28 August 2005

Ebert, Roger, "Bill Murray Makes a Quick Change", Chicago Sun-Times, 13 July 1990

Eisenberg, Adam, "Ghostbusters Revisited", Cinefex, Issue #40

Goldstein, Patrick, "Return of the Money Making Slime", Rolling Stone, 1 June 1989

Morrison, Adam, "Ghostbusters Return the Call", Marquee, May 1989

Spelling, Ian, "Bill Murray Ain't Afraid of No Ghosts!", Starlog, Issue #140, March 1989