Bill Murray Gives His Most Honest Reaction Yet To The Ghostbusters Remake

It’s hard out here for a Ghostbuster. If you happen to be one of the new, female cast members, you are dealing with a consistent trickle of online aggression against your upcoming comedy. And if you are an original Ghostbuster, an OG like Dan Aykroyd, you get accused of taking a buy out if you dare say something positive about Paul Feig’s upcoming comedy. The one member of the original team who seems like he’s earned a pass in all of this is Bill Murray… because he’s Bill F’ing Murray. So when he opened up about the new Ghostbusters, we all sat up and listened intently.

Yesterday was Ghostbusters Day, which led to the new cast joining the original cast on Jimmy Kimmel Wednesday night. During an interview segment, Bill Murray admits that he was overly protective of the idea of anyone redoing Ghostbusters, and explained why this one is a tough nut to crack. Murray said:

When you see the film, and you’ll delight in the film, it sort of rumbles along in the beginning. You’re going, ‘Oh God, are they going to pull this thing off?’ I felt like a stepfather to the whole thing. There is no quit in these girls. This is a tough movie to pull off, because it’s a big concept. There’s a lot on the plate – there’s a lot of expectation.

In Murray’s estimation, though, the team eventually pulls it off, as he tells Jimmy Kimmel that he, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson and Annie Potts were all "screaming, cheering like we were at a sporting event" by the conclusion of the new story. So there you have it. Another original Ghostbuster – and quite possibly the coolest originalGhostbuster – telling you that the new movie works.

As part of the interview, the enigmatic Bill Murray also talked a bit about how he dragged his feet on the possible Ghostbusters 3, and how that project falling apart ultimately led to the formation of the female-driven remake. Dan Aykroyd famously pursued Murray for years to get him to do another Ghostbusters film, but the comedian always balked. Then, it took convincing to get him to cameo in this movie. Murray explained:

I thought about it for a very long time. Like, many, many months. No, that’s not right. I was seriously thinking about this for years, really … It kept eating at me, and I really respect those girls. And then I started to feel like if I didn’t do this movie, maybe somebody would write a bad review or something, thinking there was some sort of disapproval [on my part].

You can see both teams together, for the first time, in the Jimmy Kimmel clip below: