UPDATE 1/27/2015 5:10 PM: Director Paul Feig has made this an even more newsworthy day for the Ghostbusters reboot, revealing the film's release date on Twitter: July 22, 2016.
Original story: Sony Pictures has zeroed in on the cast for Paul Feig's female-led Ghostbusters reboot.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Kristen Wiig and Saturday Night Live cast members Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon are in negotiations to join Melissa McCarthy in the much-discussed comedy. Feig tweeted photos of Wiig, McCarthy, McKinnon and Jones this afternoon.
The involvement of McCarthy and Wiig come as no surprise, as the actresses starred in the director's 2011 comedy Bridesmaids, and were mentioned in leaked emails from the Sony hacks. However, the other two may be a little less expected: McKinnon debuted in 2012 as an SNL featured player, followed last year by Jones.
Feig, who's writing the script with The Heat collaborator Katie Dippold, has said the film will be a complete reboot with no connection to the earlier installments of the beloved comedy franchise. “I love the first one so much I don’t want to do anything to ruin the memory of that," he revealed in October. "So it just felt like, let’s just restart it because then we can have new dynamics. I want the technology to be even cooler. I want it to be really scary, and I want it to happen in our world today that hasn’t gone through it so it’s like, oh my God what’s going on?”
A third Ghostbusters had been long in development, with original director Ivan Reitman and stars Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson attached to return. However, following Ramis' death last year, Reitman withdrew as director. But even as rumors began to circulate about a female-led reboot, franchise champion Aykroyd discussed the possibilities of a Marvel-style universe, suggesting there's room for different takes on the Ghostbusters, across different mediums.