In a recent interview with Dennis Miller, Dan Aykroyd confirmed that, yes, there will be a Ghostbusters III, and it’s going ahead whether or not Bill Murray signs on to be a part of it.
From Gothamist:
Yes, we will be doing the movie, and hopefully with Mr. Murray. That is our hope. We have an excellent script, and what we have to remember is that Ghostbusters is bigger than any one component. Although Billy was absolutely the lead and contributive to it in a massive way, as was the director and Harold [Ramis], myself and all of us—Sigourney [Weaver]. The concept is much bigger than any individual role, and the promise of Ghostbusters III is that we get to hand the equipment and the franchise down to new blood, because my character, Ray, is now blind in one eye and can’t drive the cadillac; he’s got a bad knee and can’t pick up the pack. Harold is too big—Egon is too large to get into the harness. We need young blood, and that’s the promise. We’re gonna hand it to a new generation. We’ll be in production in the spring, I hope.
Also reported by the Gothamist is that no one has been cast yet, “though Aykroyd did mention Matthew Gray Gubler. The IMDB page currently mentions Anna Faris and Eliza Dushku, and previously, Paul Rudd, Seth Rogan and Judd Apatow were rumored to be attached.”
Further speculation provided by The Marquee Blog on CNN states that “Ashton Kutcher’s name has been thrown around in relation to a younger squad.”
Not everyone is happy about the prospect of seeing the Ghostbusters series become a trilogy. An open letter to Dan Akroyd at the Ansible Network makes a number of good points why, with or without Murray, Akroyd should drop the idea of this movie altogether. For example:
[Ghostbusters] was made at a very specific time in Hollywood, just before special effects shifted from optical to digital. The technological constrictions of the time actually HELP the movie. The flying library cards, the demon arms grabbing Dana Barrett through the arm chair, the terror dogs, Mr. Stay Puft…some of the most iconic images in the movie were achieved using practical effects, puppets and miniatures, which lent a credibility to the movie. So much of that movie looks real because it IS real, and it makes the effects-based creatures like Slimer even crazier because they stand in such sharp contrast.
Now here’s a scary cartoon to watch.