Kicking and flailing

 https://ghostbustersnews.com/2021/10/29/ghostbusters-afterlife-was-secretly-being-developed-in-2016-same-year-as-the-franchise-was-rebooted/

 

I really have to scratch my head when I hear people give apropos to the 2016 GB reboot.  The director of Ghostbusters: Afterlife seems to think Paul Feig did something monumental just by casting females as Ghostbusters.  He says Feig "broke down the door".  The sexist trolls who hated GB '16 before it was ever released are not gone because of Paul Feig.  And I do think the movie would have done better had it not been for them but I don't think it would have been a "success" per se. I think the film would have made another $100 million had sexism not been an obstacle for many people liking the movie, which on paper would be the same #s as the first Ghostbusters film.  That's more than what the OG made, but that's in 1984 dollars.  The amount of Ghostbusters grossed at the box office with inflation factored in is closer to a billion.  GB '16 would have had to make at least $500 million -- roughly half -- to even compare to the original in terms of box office performance.  It didn't make half of THAT.  GB2 made apprx $500 million which would have been enough for a sequel a lot sooner had the owners of Columbia Pictures changed.  Between Bill Murray's bitterness about GB2 and Sony not wanting to pay as much as The Coke-A-Cola Compnay had promised in the contracts that they had drawn up... it just took a really long time to happen.  If Harold Ramis were still alive, I'm not even sure GB3 would even be happening.  Jason Reitman even acknowledges that the story of GB:AFTERLIFE solidified in his mind after Harold Ramis had passed.  If a GB3 were ever going to happen, it'd have to be without Bill Murray, which is fine by me but a lot of people would probably refuse to see it based on that alone.

I'm not meaning to say that box office performance necessarily proves a movie to be good.  Certain genres of film are naturally going to have a very low performance.  A movie like BASKET CASE or HEAVENLY CREATURES is not going to plow through the records book.  At least not any significant records book  You might see some bizarre personal plea to the world such as those films were breaking records for like most tickets per screen on such and such weekend...but nothing like Top 10 of x year or whatever.  Exceptions abound, obviously....it's hard to say why a film like BEETLEJUICE can be so successful yet A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE was a box office bomb.  Surely, the subject matter of A.I. is more relatable than that of BEETLEJUICE.  ..
  And then there's just plain oddities like THE POSTMAN, which I think, being a futuristic "what if" kind of movie, is going to have naysayers because of a variety of things that people just don't see eye to eye with.  Videohound's review indicated a sense of befuddlement over the idea that a mail man could in some way be interpreted as a symbol of patriotism.  That's just one example. I could probably think of more if I looked harder.
I guess it's quite possible that GB '16 is in its own way on par with THE POSTMAN.  I just don't see it.