Remember that cool moment for women in film where the Ghostbusters reboot featured an all-woman cast? It’s about to be undone by an all-male sequel to the 1984 original and its 1989 follow-up — and Leslie Jones is pissed.
The comedian and actress starred in the 2016 reboot alongside Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Kristen Wiig. The new movie will based on the 1984 and 1989 films, ignoring what takes place in the 2016 version.
The all-male reboot is a project of director Jason Reitman (Tully, Juno), whose father Ivan produced the first two Ghostbusters films.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
Jones took to Twitter Saturday to express her frustrations, even calling the reboot a Donald Trump move.
“So insulting,” she tweeted. “Like fuck us. We dint [sic] count. It’s like something trump would do. (Trump voice) ‘Gonna redo ghostbusteeeeers, better with men, will be huge. Those women ain’t ghostbusteeeeers’ ugh so annoying. Such a dick move. And I don’t give fuck I’m saying something!!”
So insulting. Like fuck us. We dint count. It’s like something trump would do. (Trump voice)”Gonna redo ghostbusteeeeers, better with men, will be huge. Those women ain’t ghostbusteeeeers” ugh so annoying. Such a dick move. And I don’t give fuck I’m saying something!!
— Leslie Jones ? (@Lesdoggg) January 19, 2019
While a lot of the replies to her tweet mentioned that the omission of the all-woman reboot was an “obvious” choice based on its failure and recalled the sexist commentary that surrounded its initial release, the numbers say otherwise. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the 2016 movie has 74% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is higher than the Ghostbusters II rating, and grossed $229 million worldwide. Domestically, it has outearned 2016’s Bad Moms, which got a sequel, and paced just below the 2016 awards season darling La La Land.
Others were on Jones’ side. Journalist Hannah Woodhead wrote an "open letter to Jason Reitman," for the U.K. magazine Little White Lies, calling out the advances the 2016 reboot made. “People will moan that Hollywood has run out of ideas, but that’s simply not true,” Woodhead wrote. “I fondly remember the fierce innovation that came with Paul Feig’s 2016 Ghostbusters. They were Ghostbusters, but they were also women. A lot of men were very upset about the suggestion that women (in particular, a Black woman) could bust ghosts, shrouding it in negativity.”
For anyone not sick of reboots yet, the next Ghostbusters sequel is slated for 2020.