Before cameras even rolled on Paul Feig's "Ghostbusters" reboot, reports surfaced of Sony's plans for a second franchise film built around Channing Tatum and Chris Pratt. Although Pratt referred to the rumors as "complete bullshit," they persisted. Now, however, producer Ivan Reitman insists the project "was never real."

“There was a writer hired by the studio who did 30 pages, and it wasn’t very good," he tells The Globe and Mail. "The biggest misconception was that we were creating a parallel film in case the girls version didn’t work out. But the only movie we were making was Paul’s movie. It never faltered.”

Rumors of the Tatum-produced "Ghostbusters" film date back to December 2014, when emails were leaked as part of the Sony Pictures hack. The project was announced in March 2015 with the studio's formation of Ghost Corps, a company devoted to the branding, and expansion, of the franchise. Reitman himself enlisted “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” directors Anthony and Joe Russo to direct and produce the movie from a script by “Iron Man 3″ screenwriter Drew Pearce.

Now we know those plans didn't pan out. Ghost Corps remains, however, and is behind such projects as the newly announced "Ghostbusters: Ecto Force." While the goal is to expand the franchise with spinoffs and sequels, Reitman bristles at the term "cinematic universe."

“I hate using those terms – it diminishes what we’re going to end up doing,” he says. “But we’re hoping we can make sense of these two parallel movies [the original series and the Feig reboot] – we have an idea for it, we’re working on it.”

(via IGN)