Will Sony Cancel The Ghostbusters Sequel?

By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS)

Director Paul Feig and Sony tried to relaunch not only a Ghostbusters film, but an entire universe and franchise of films, television, and merchandise. To say the studio was bullish is a bit of an understatement.

The film received quite a bit of negative vitriol from a small portion of the fanbase before the premiere, and a lot of the politics around the film dominated the news. It seems that all of that may have hurt Ghostbusters at the box office, which is on track to lose $70 million or more (based on the budget and marketing costs), which effectively puts the chances of a sequel in jeopardy.

Currently, the film has made approximately $180 million worldwide, with $117 million of that from the domestic market. Internationally the film has only made $63 million, but it has yet to open in several markets, such as France, Japan, and Mexico. The film won’t premiere in China, which is the world’s second largest market, so that is a definite blow to the film’s earning potential.

Analysts project the film will have some issues hitting $225 million, but made on a production budget of $144 million, the Ghostbusters needs to make at least $300 million to break even, if not more since theaters get a chunk of box office receipts (the rule of thumb is to make 2 to 2.5 times the budget to break even). But that doesn’t include the millions spent on marketing.

All may not be lost, however, as a Sony spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter that the calculation extremely inaccurate. Here’s what they said:

“This loss calculation is way off. With multiple revenue streams, including consumer products, gaming, location-based entertainment, continued international rollout, and huge third-party promotional partnerships that mitigated costs, the bottom line, even before co-financing, is not remotely close to that number.”

As Yogurt said in Spaceballs, “Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made!” What this sounds like to me is that Sony won’t lose money on the film thanks to the merchandising, even though it will bomb at the box office, but I’m pretty sure studio heads are still disappointed. The studio also issued this statement:

“We’re very proud of the bold movie Paul Feig made, which critics and audiences loved. It has enlivened a 30-year-old brand and put it into the modern zeitgeist. As a result, we have many ideas in the works to further exploit the Ghostbusters universe.”

Those other ideas include an animated feature that could potentially premiere in theaters in 2019 ,as well as an animated TV series called Ghostbusters: Ecto Force. These quotes still deflect the big question of whether the poor box office performance would see the cancellation of a sequel.

I can see Sony greenlighting a direct sequel as a way to sell more merchandise and other third-party revenue streams. It’s also possible that they may not make a direct sequel, but launch another film set in the same universe. Whatever the studio decides to do, I’m positive we’ll see more Ghostbusters one way or another.