Wikileaks Reveal Abandoned Ghostbusters 3 Plot Details, Final Development Death Throes

A slew of emails were released this week following Sony's hack, which revealed details about one of Etan Cohen's final drafts for Ghostbusters: Alive Again, the last known true movie sequel to the original Ghostbusters storyline. We've been sent many details, we'll try to organize them in chronological order and clarify them as best we can.

Note: Usually we link to sources, but the correspondences here are wrought with personal email addresses that still may be in use. Best not to disseminate those.

Before you read, you may want to brush up on Ivan Reitman's Dec 2013 casting wishlist and leaked character breakdowns that we last saw in 2014. Let's just pick a casting for your brain to mold to for this breakdown...

Chris: Charlie Day
Anna: Brie Larson
Jeremy: Jonah Hill (who turned this down, by the way)
Dean: Zach Galifianakis
Ashley: Rebel Wilson
Gniewko: Sacha Baron Cohen

• The movie opens with Anna, many of the central characters do not know each other.

• Chris is a shining academic and has an experimental machine that is responsible for bringing about potential paranormal calamity. The machine is being funded by an org or person named "Parsons." Friend Jeremy pursued a "worthless degree" he didn't believe in (paranormal psychology?) but may be just the expert Chris needs for help. 

• Chris goes to the firehouse to seek the old Ghostbusters crew. 

• Egon and Ray are dead in this script, Ray's ghost possesses newcomer Chris early on. At least one other Ghostbuster is still alive, though it is unclear who that is.

• Dean is the son of Ray, who creates legal waivers and ignores cease&desist letters. 

• The sky bulges and "something" tries to push through. 

• Chris is possessed in a restaurant and cannot move of his own free will. 

• Anna is visited by a ghost at an operating room. 

• There's an apartment scene between Jeremy and Chris that Sony head Amy Pascal loved. 

• A plot point involves "hellion" ghosts going into and emerging from mouths of humans and animals. It is mentioned that they come through the "birthing canal/membrane", whatever that means! 

• Louis Tully and his wife (Janine? Not clarified.) were in the script

• Dana Barret had a "beat" that Sony Pictures Prez Doug Belgrad called "lame".  Venkman gets a mention at the very least, hard to decipher what the emails are saying about him, but it is described as very "Jump Street". We'll take that to mean the moment is meta.  

• There was a love story between new busters Chris and Anna. Anna deflects advances because she doesn't want to date a coworker.

• There were scenes where the team was creating a website, setting up the firehouse, prepping equipment and cars.

• There were scenes with paranormal happenings around the city, sans Ghostbuster intervention.

• Ashley is their receptionist.

• The new Ghostbusters go on their first bust around 70 pages in.

• There's a laser tag scene. 

• There was a scene at FAO Schwartz that Sony brass was nonplussed about. "We can do better" and unhappy references to the Smurfs movie, in which a FAO movie scene had recently taken place. In that scene, ghosts brought toys to life. Sony's exec team noted that it would be better to see ghosts than have them possess items.

• About an hour and a half in, a character named J. Michael is introduced. Is this character's name a shout out to Real Ghostbusters scribe J. Michael Straczynski? Near the end this character is paid off.

• The busters cross streams and soon after ghosts rise from a cemetery.

• Somewhere at the end is a giant ghost that is a baby. Sony execs mention that this concept has been done before. Hard to discern what they mean, perhaps the idea that the Cloverfield monster was a baby or perhaps the idea that a giant usually-harmless thing shows up is too close to Stay Puft.

• Speaking of, Stay Puft returns in this script. It is unclear but Egon and Ray's ghosts might have had a role in the final minutes. Sony staffers were weary about the marshmallow man's return.

• It is revealed late that main baddie Gniewko was actually possessed into doing all the bad things he did.

• Anna has an ex who's car gets destroyed near the end of the film. 

That's what was talked about. Taking educated guesses: We're thinking that a CERN-style particle accelerator, as Dan Aykroyd alluded to many times over the last few years, was the driving force behind bulging skies and membranes birthing hellions into our world. Neat stuff. "Birthing canal" and "giant ghost baby" sound pretty connected. Sounds like a nice and strange Ghostbusters moment.

Sony team members praised developments in this version but wanted more funny, more edgy, more team relationship tension and more flirtatious spark. Perhaps another draft was crafted between January and February's shake-up with Ivan passing the director's torch. Hard to tell.

Other details of note: Several members of the Sony team loved Max Landis' ideas (specifically Slimer's backstory) and even talked about potentially bringing him in for a meeting. Previous scribes Gene and Lee were mentioned very often as potential collaborators to bring back in mid 2014. Lizzy Caplan's agent reached out to express her interest. No less than two random directors that had never helmed a major motion picture somehow found Amy Pascal's email address and begged to be considered. Seth Rogen and his writing partner were consulted but felt their brand of comedy was too rated-R for Ghostbusters.

Perhaps the most heart-breaking story revealed in these correspondences revolves around Zombieland's Ruben Fleischer. As soon as he heard that Sony was shopping around for directors, he immediately emailed Amy Pascal directly stating "i'm ready!!" "this is my all time dream project and i will do whatever it takes to make this movie for you" "i love this franchise more than anything as it shaped me as a person and who i am as a filmmaker more than any other. please tell me what i have to do!" What became of that early offer (March 2014) is never clear, but they were trying to set a meeting in May with Belgrad adding "personally I think we have the Ruben meeting and if he’s awesome we should hire him and develop a new draft with Gene and Lee when they are avail." Perhaps it came down to the fact that Paul Feig had been courted from the beginning and had a change of heart on the project - along with a radical reboot idea.

Pascal spent $93,000 on a trip to Toronto to talk GB3 with Ivan. Then the Feig transition happened and this changed from a Ghostbusters 3 story to a Ghostbusters reboot story. The first leak about Feig's involvement "opened the well" for Dan Aykroyd and put him on what was described internally as a "warpath." Word leaked to the press that Kate Dippold was co-writing before Ivan knew and Ivan wrote in that he was "incredibly pissed." Bad vibes were eventually calmed and the project was brought to the state it is in today.

Thanks to Andreas and Davide for the tips.