Warning: Minor spoilers for Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
The Ghostbusters franchise recently saw the addition of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, essentially the third entry in the series following Ghostbusters II. However, not long after the second film was released, there were plans for a third Ghostbusters film with a very different concept to that of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, as it would have continued the story of the original team instead of introducing a new one.
The world met a peculiar group of paranormal investigators in 1984 with Ivan Reitman's Ghostbusters, which marked the beginning of a successful franchise that has expanded to other media as well, most notably television and video games. The film was a big success, both financially and with critics, and became a cultural phenomenon, making way for a sequel that arrived five years later. Ghostbusters II had Ivan Reitman back as director as well as the whole team (Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson), Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, and Annie Potts. The sequel failed to repeat the success of the first film, but spawned various video games, comic books, and other merchandise, further expanding the franchise, even if it's regarded as the one responsible of stalling the world of Ghostbusters for decades.
The film side of the franchise was revisited in 2016 with Paul Feig's Ghostbusters, which featured an all-female team formed by Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones. Sadly, the film drew a lot of backlash even before it was released, and ended up being a box office bomb. As a result, Sony opted to not move forward with a sequel, instead choosing to continue the original series a few years later. Ghostbusters: Afterlife was announced in January 2019 with Jason Reitman in charge of directing and with the story following a new generation of Ghostbusters – Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), who move to their late grandfather's farm in Summerville, Oklahoma with their mother Callie (Carrie Coon). Once there, the siblings discover their family's link to one of the original Ghostbusters as the town begins to experience a series of unexplained earthquakes. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is a completely different story to the one Dan Aykroyd had written for a third film – and here's what his Ghostbusters 3 would have looked like.
Plans for a third Ghostbusters film began during filming of the second one, but Harold Ramis was unsure about it because of the main cast's ages and how difficult it was to get them all together. In addition to that, Bill Murray wasn't interested in coming back for another film. With that in mind, Aykroyd wrote a story set in the early 21st century and with the team now retired, coming together one more time to battle a “poltergeist plague”. It was initially reported that the film would have seen Egon and Ray attempting to continue the business after Venkman left. By continuing the story of the original team, Ghostbusters 3 would have been a proper sequel to Ghostbusters 2, unlike Ghostbusters: Afterlife which, even though it will count with the appearances of the remaining members, will focus on a new generation.
Titled Ghostbusters 3: Hellbent, the film would have taken the team to an alternate version of Manhattan called Manhellton, as Hell would have been the source of the story's conflict. According to Aykroyd, Ghostbusters 3 would have featured the Hell version of Manhattan, its places and people, and as Hell was getting too crowded, many damned souls would have begun to roam the Earth, unleashing the aforementioned “poltergeist plague”. Of course, this journey would have included a meeting with Lucifer himself, which would have been a whole new territory for the Ghostbusters, but one that would have fit Aykroyd's initial vision for the franchise, as he wanted a team that could travel through time and space to combat different demonic and supernatural threats – and this was as close to that idea as he got.
Given that the team would have been retired (and with Venkman somewhere else), Ghostbusters 3 would have served as the introduction for a new and younger team. Back in 1996, Ramis said Aykroyd's script included a younger “and probably more handsome team”, adding years later that the original cast would have been back to play the role of mentors to the new team. In 2005, Ramis said that they had Chris Farley, Chris Rock, and Ben Stiller in mind to play some of the new Ghostbusters, but it was too late by then. The new team would have reportedly been formed by Franky, a “body-pierced, tough New Jersey punker”, Lovell, a “dreadlocked dude”, Moira, a “pretty but uptight gymnast and science grad”, Carla, “a Latino beauty”, and Nat, a “prepubescent genius whose powerful brain has made his head abnormally large” who would have served as supervisor for the new Ghostbusters.
The story for Ghostbusters 3 didn't go to waste, at least not entirely. The 2009 video game, appropriately titled Ghostbusters: The Video Game, had the team training a new member: the player, referred to in the game as “the rookie”. The plot takes elements from the first film, mostly the demi-god Gozer the Gozerian, with the team (and the player, of course) taking down the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man once more. It then takes the player to another mission at the New York Public Library, where a portal to the Ghost World is opened after capturing the Librarian Ghost. A mysterious mandala is discovered to be drawing ghosts in, merging the Ghost World into the human one. The Ghostbusters end up being dragged into the Ghost World where they battle Shandor's Destructor Form, a Satanic being called the Architect. The team visiting Ghost World was based on Ghostbusters 3's idea of Manhellton and their encounter with Lucifer, and Aykroyd considers the game “essentially the third movie”.
Ghostbuster 3 went through many versions after Aykroyd's script: one by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, a passing of the torch story in which Venkman would have died in the first act and Dana's son Oscar would have become a Ghostbuster, and another by Etan Cohen, with Venkman also dying but becoming a ghost, and a group of Columbia students taking the Ghostbusters mantle. Ivan Reitman was set to return as director of this version, but after Ramis' death in 2014 he decided to step down. Murray's reluctance to commit to a new Ghostbusters film was also a big obstacle during development, so it was decided instead that the franchise be rebooted – that's when Feig's 2016 Ghostbusters reboot happened.
Although the cast and Feig had signed on for two sequels, the film's poor box office performance was enough for the studio to decide to not move forward with any sequels, instead choosing to make a direct sequel to Ghostbusters II with Jason Reitman on board as director and co-writer. Ghostbusters: Afterlife brought back the original cast (yes, Bill Murray too), but they were only in one major scene together, with the majority of the story focused on Trevor and Phoebe story, their connection with Egon Spengler's mission following his death, and forming a new Ghostbusters team.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife offered some closure to the remaining members of the original team, especially considering how their team fell apart in the years after Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II. It also succeeded in introducing a new one that could carry on the legacy of Venkman, Stantz, Spengler, and Zeddemore in the future. What's more, the film retains the idea of a new and younger team, something which would have happened in Ghostbusters 3. In this instance, the new team is made up of characters with close ties to the original team rather than newcomers with no ties.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife seems to have reworked certain elements from Aykroyd's Ghostbusters 3. In Afterlife, Harold Ramis appears posthumously in the finale, with the ghost form of Egon Spengler popping in briefly to assist his grandchildren and his old teammates. Interestingly enough, Bill Murray once told The Daily Mail that he would only do Ghostbusters 3 if he were written in as a ghost.
"I'll come back in Ghostbusters III only if I get to be a ghost. I said to them, 'I'll do it if you kill me off in the first reel.' So now they are going to have me as a ghost in the film."
While Ghostbusters: Afterlife kept Murray's character alive, his idea to kill him off in the first reel and have him as a ghost was the very one used for Ramis' character. Egon was killed off in the early moments of the film, with an appearance as a ghost later on (thanks to visual effects). Although Ghostbusters 3 was never officially made, it's interesting to see how past ideas (including Murray's) were repurposed for Ghostbusters: Afterlife in a way that made more sense considering Ramis' passing.
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