Gee, Really? Dan Aykroyd Finally Acknowledges Bill Murray Will Not Do GHOSTBUSTERS 3.

The old gang aint getting back together after all.

After years spent denying what was obvious all along and insisting that they could mount a third film in the Ghostbusters franchise with the original cast back on board, original writer-star Dan Aykroyd has finally faced the reality that it just isn't going to happen:

At this point it [Ghostbusters 3] is in suspended animation. The studio, the director Ivan Reitman and Harold Ramis feel there must be a way to do it, but Bill Murray will not do the movie. He doesn't want to be involved.

That only took how many years of grandstanding and big talk to acknowledge?

Ghostbusters 3 is, and always has been, nothing but a smoke and mirrors show. There's never been anything to it because Murray has never wanted to do it. And, frankly, good for him. It's been years since Reitman directed anything good, Rick Moranis - who would be a key reason to go back again - has been in a self imposed exile for decades, and just check out some of these quotes from the same interview in which he acknowledges the obvious for why you may want to question Aykroyd's value these days:

I will walk out the door [to get] the pay cheque I deserve and working with the superstars. I'm not going to work for people who are unknown.

I don't want to work any more really in film. I'd have to be called up by triple-A superstars. I get offers all the time from film makers, but they are unknown quantities. I don't go there and do experiments.

Everyone who wants to work goes on auditions and makes impassioned pleas ... But it doesn't interest me to pursue like that any more.

Overall message there? Give him a big payday next to some big names and he'll come out but expect him to put in effort and he becomes much less interested. And suddenly it becomes much more clear why the last actual good movie that Aykroyd appeared in was 1997's Grosse Pointe Blank. It's one thing to demand a-list treatment when you're actually an a-lister but ... well ... Aykroyd hasn't been one for over twenty years which makes comments like the above sound really pretty toxic.