If you hadn’t heard, there were rumors going around of a third Ghostbusters movie being made that would star the original quartet of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson, but also with the more “current” group of Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen, Steve Carell, and Romany Malco coming in as the next generation who would take over the franchise.  (Apparently even in a new generation, the main four guys need to be one-quarter black.)

I have my reservations about restarting long-dormant franchises, especially with the recent Indy IV debacle.  (Although Rocky Balboa and Live Free or Die Hard proved it could be done well…)  But I like that this would be a sequel instead of another ridiculous remake/reboot, and if it has Bill Murray’s blessing, I’m naturally on board.

Alas, it came out yesterday that Paul Rudd hadn’t heard anything about these rumors, although he did add, “I would do it in a second with those guys. But do you think it’s a good idea to redo ‘Ghostbusters’? It’s a classic.”  I like the fact that he acknowledged that it would be wrong to do an out and out remake, because he’s right – it is a comedy institution.

(Of course, this kind of a remake is still acceptable.)

Meanwhile, Ghostbusters: The Video Game, which looks all kinds of awesome, vanished from the line-up of games to come this fall due to the merger between Activision and Vivendi.  But now there is word that Sony Pictures wants the game released, and they are looking at timing it for next year to coincide with the original movie’s 25th anniversary.  While it sucks to have to wait until 2009, it does give the developers more time to fine tune the game, and hopefully that’ll work out better for everyone.   And if there is in fact no Ghostbusters 3 coming to a theatre near me, I definitely want this game, which was written by Aykroyd and Ramis as a third movie, set in 1991, and starring the voices of all the original cast members, except for Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis.  They’ll be missed, but the ability to use the Wiimote to fire proton streams is just too cool for me to stand.