However you feel about director Paul Feig’s “Ghostbusters” reboot, there’s no question the 2016 film was a dud. Costing $144 million and taking in a box-office haul of $229 million, the film lost any chance of a sequel and while critical reviews were fine, they weren’t stellar.

Feig’s back in cinemas this week with the much tighter budgeted “A Simple Favour,” dubbed a ‘post-modern film noir’ thriller which stars Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick. Out doing promo rounds for it, he spoke with Happy Sad Confused podcast where he looked back at “Ghostbusters” and revealed his initial inspiration for the now abandoned sequel was while he was doing press for the first film:

“I definitely wanted us to go to another country. Because when we were doing the press tour, the international press tour, every country the reporters would come with these drawings or artist renderings of that country’s ghosts. And every country has these really wild ghost stories and ghost characters that they scare kids with or keep people in line with. I really loved the idea of the Ghostbusters going to like Asia. Yeah, so there’s a lot of fun stuff what we could have done.”

Things are looking happier for Feig’s “a Simple Favour” which is drawing rave reviews and is expected to have a $12-15 million opening weekend.