I did read some of the stuff aimed at you.

It was crazy. And the thing is, look, we’re in showbiz. If you go into the public eye, you’re asking for it. I don’t say that’s not true. We’ve got a cool job, we get to put stuff out there, and I take it as part of the gig.

But: I wasn’t ready for it. I wasn’t mentally ready to go back to the playground, and have the worst bullies I’d had at school suddenly in my phone.

Do you ever wish you were ready for it?

No. No, I don’t.

That’s why that quote that came out – that was very upsetting to me – that was repurposed from a book interview I did eighteen months ago [Editor’s note: Feig was quoted as saying that “geek culture is home to some of the biggest assholes I’ve ever met in my life”].

The interview was done a week after I announced the four actresses, and I’d just been getting fucking pummelled. Ugly shit about them, about these wonderful women, and it was personal attacks after personal attacks. And when this guy asked me this question about geeks being so powerful, it was this release of saying there’s assholes out there.

I so regret that I said ‘in the geek community’, because what I know now, having sorted it out, is these are not true members of the geek community.

We’ve had quite a lot aimed at the site too, interestingly, by so-called ‘meninists’ for some of the material we’ve run. And one such ‘meninist’ told us – I don’t know if there’s anything to this – that there’s a secret Facebook group that cites certain articles on certain websites. Then, those articles are suddenly flooded with comments.

Oh yeah. It’s crazy.

Just the way that our dislikes on that trailer could be driven up as high as they were that fast? This is not possible. [Editor’s note: this refers to the first Ghostbusters trailer, that has a record number of downvotes on YouTube]

I only actually watched that trailer for the first time properly before this interview. I’ve watched the film, and liked the film. But it’s not a great trailer, is it?

No, no…

Can we move onto actually making the film, then. How does the mechanic change for you? You’ve done original films that, with the best will in the world, nobody expected to be as successful as they were. You paid your dues with earlier films before Bridesmaids that didn’t enjoy that much success. But when you’re then making a Ghostbusters film, it’s a franchise. A studio franchise film that they’ve been trying to get off the ground in some form for decades.

So, for instance, how much of this is Ghostbusters, and how much is you? Were there more cooks on this one, given it’s such a big franchise? How much autonomy do you get when it’s not yours?

In terms of marketing?

No: the film itself.

[Laughs] I cashed in all my chips with this.

It was very much like, you guys have got to let me do this the way I want to do it. To Sony’s credit, they were like, you do your thing, you do your film. Katie and I wrote the draft, and they all had notes. Ivan Reitman was in there too. We were doing all this work on this, but I was also cashing in the chips, saying you guys have got to let me do my thing.

And did they?

They did. They were barely around during production, because they were happy with the dailies. They were clearly monitoring them like crazy, as anyone would with a giant franchise film costing $150m, but it wasn’t that level of micro-management that you would normally get with a big property like this.

They weren’t expecting to get the film as quickly as they did. Because when I said I’d do it, they assumed I was going to take a year to develop a script. In their head, we were going to be shooting it this summer. But I said I want this to be my next project. That is what we are shooting for.

I said I think we can do this, I think me and Katie can pull this off. I told Sony we could have a draft for Christmas [2014], and that’s what we did. We got it ready, they loved it, had notes and thoughts, but overall were extremely positive. And suddenly were going, we can actually do this. Otherwise, they were going into this summer without a giant comedy summer tentpole movie like this. They obviously had Angry Birds and stuff like that. But this was the project that dropped in for them.

I was able to ask for space, because even though it’s a giant movie, I have to treat it the same way I treat my small movies. Otherwise, it’ll lose all that energy, comedy, my style.

This was all going on towards the end of 2014, and then the attack on Sony’s servers happened…

Well, that was a big bomb that went off in the middle of everything.

I’m in an odd position here, as I’ve not read the documents that were leaked as part of the Sony cyber-terrorism attack in the midst of The Interview’s release window back at the end of 2014. But I’ve been told lots of times that you’re in there.

Let me address all these head on. A few things went around.

One was us trying to keep Ivan Reitman away from this project. Let me say this. You find me any director, anywhere in the world, who says I want another director -who I idolise – standing over my shoulder looking at me.

I love Ivan. He was involved every step of the way, he is the king, he is the man that did this. But I had people saying ‘how dare he try and get rid of him’. All I can say is: any filmmaker would make sure they had autonomy. Look at JJ! George Lucas was not on the set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. You need to be able to do this stuff.

Then there was the one where they more make fun of me. Amy Pascal was still running the studio at the time, and she had to meet with Dan Aykroyd and his people…

I do need to say: I’ve not read this or heard any of this before, nor have I covered it at Den Of Geek [here’s why]. I’m not necessarily asking you to give all the details here.

No, I appreciate that. But there’s so much stuff out there that I read and want to respond to.

Which is partly why I raised the question. I don’t think we’ve heard your voice fully on this yet, and I wanted to put this stuff to you directly, to give you a direct chance to answer.

Yeah. I want to talk honestly about it.

Amy and the meeting, then.

Amy Pascal had said can you write up a synopsis of all the stuff, so I can have it for this meeting. It was the idea I had at the time that Katie and I then morphed into something very different.

I wrote it all out, then – trying to be a guy working with a studio – I was talking about an early idea we had, about ghosts of aliens from other worlds. But I wrote, ‘in a billion dollar idea’. Because I’m doing studio speak, and that’s what the studio understands. That was when the hack happened, and that was the one thing I was like, ‘oh no’. I was sitting at my dining room table when I wrote it, thinking if anyone ever read this it’d be so embarrassing! But I left it in, thinking I need to be a salesman.

But then the hack happened. And I was like, is it going to come out? And there it was.

This is the question I wanted to put to you about it: what’s it like being a human being when your emails are leaked online?

It’s…

[Paul Feig paused for a few seconds here. It’s clear this isn’t the most comfortable topic, but at no stage were any of my questions not answered, or was I asked not to ask about certain topics. I think it’s important to point that out].

You try to go ‘I’m cool, I don’t care’. These are the trappings of it. But it’s so not who I am, because I’m an over-sensitive geek who was terrorised by bullies at school. So you go, I’m a professional now. But that’s why you crack occasionally.

[Another slight pause]

If you look at my history through all this, I was rock solid for a year. I didn’t put anything ugly out, I didn’t really respond too much to anything. All through production, I was told by the studio I was handling it well. I was putting out pictures, positive, positive, positive.

What happened, though, is that we wrap production, and my wife and I go on holiday to Italy. We go to my favourite restaurant….

I’ve said it publicly before. I do not block people on Twitter, I want to hear from everybody, because hearing the most vile stuff, you at least go I’m still getting everyone’s opinion. I’m seeing what’s out there. I’m a data collector! I like to know what people are thinking: it’s why we do test screenings. I want to know. So I’m not going to block anybody.

[Editor’s note: just to be clear, the inference here was that Feig didn’t used to block anyone].

But there were a few people who were just fucking hammering me. Just non-stop. My feed filled with it. At one point it was these three guys, who piled on. And what they do is they just leave your name in [their Twitter chat], so you get all their conversations coming in.

There I am, trying to sort through lovely nice people who keep writing [on Twitter]. Parents are sending pictures of their daughters who have made cosplay Ghostbusters outfits. And it was so inspiring, this is what we’re doing it for.

But then these guys were in there. So we’re at my favourite restaurant on the side of a cliff, overlooking the Mediterranean. We’re relaxing, I’m so happy, relieved to have finished the shoot. My wife goes to the restroom, and I quickly check my Twitter feed. And just at that moment, those guys said something that set me off. And I thought you know what? I’m just going to do it. I’m just going to fire back.

And it felt so good.

For how long?

For about a day, actually. And my wife said to me, you shouldn’t have done that. But I said I’m so happy I did this. I just got to strike out. And it was only when I woke up the next morning when I thought, I really should not have done that.

In social media terms, the game is always a little rigged against you isn’t it? That thousands of people can say anything they like, but if you say one thing back, that becomes the story?

Yeah. Because now I’m an asshole. Now I will always be the guy who attacked them.

The way the world works is that because you’re perceived to have 54 billion dollars, parties with movie stars every night, it’s assumed that you can take all of that, and that it comes with the job?

[Laughs] Totally.

But I very much regret I did that.

Where does all that leave you now? If I happened to have – and I don’t – a ready to go screenplay for a new Ghostbusters movie in my bag, has the last year or two put you off? Would you attack such a project now with a new wariness?

If you asked me this two months ago, I’d have said no way. I’m not touching this, never again, never again, never again. But we finished it. And I love it. I’m really proud of it.

Do you think you’d write about it, maybe in another book?

I’ve thought about that, and you know what, I don’t think I will. It was so painful going through it, but once it’s done, it’s water under the bridge. That’s why now I’m in such a Kum-Ba-Yah mood. That guys, we’ve had our differences. Check it out. If you hate it, you hate it. If you’re going to hate-watch it, hate-watch it. I get it. It’s fine. But I’m proud of it. It’s going to make people have fun in the cinema this summer.

When the credits starting rolling on the movie, I was digesting the film, and working out what I liked and what I didn’t. I found myself stopping, because it struck me I just had a smile on my face, that I was grinning.

I appreciate that. But look, no movie is perfect. The first cut of the movie was four hours and 15 minutes long!

One thing I wasn’t quite expecting – although I got this with the first film too – there was a moment in it that was really spooky, and I jumped out of my seat.

[Laughs] I love that.

It did get me thinking: when you did Spy, it got you directing action for the first time. This time, it’s special effects for the first time in earnest. I got a sense watching Ghostbusters that you’re a man a little frustrated by special effects in movies?

Yeah.

You can generally tell the filmmakers who are, as they give you special effects sequences where you can see what’s going on.

Right. Yeah, yeah. That is exactly what it is. I am frustrated by special effects, and by the way that people shoot action. My producing partner Jessie Henderson will tell you that I’ve said this a million times: we can’t just do mayhem, it can’t be meaningless, it can’t be that kind of movie. Because we’re a comedy, the fun and the action and everybody needs to contribute to the story, or a joke. We need to build all this stuff.

Also, I love Hong Kong movies. Where there’s a fight scene, the camera’s wide and down and those guys are fighting. They’re doing what they do, and you’re not trying to cover up someone who can’t fight. So even that [redacted details of sequence for spoiler reasons] scene, that’s stuntmen in there. They’re doing that, wearing lightsuits that we augment with CG. I didn’t want them fighting tennis balls, I wanted them there, doing that stuff. The ghosts were played by real people, even though we augmented them a lot with CG. Those were real people in there.

You get a Road House reference in there too…

It’s a classic!

We’re nearly out of time, so I wanted to ask you this: what do you say to the people who follow in your path now?

What you’ve done here, in making a stand for something – no matter what people think of the film – seems important to me. It’s led to no shortage of shit, granted, but you stuck it out and didn’t run away. But to the people tempted to make a film, to put their heart into something like this who have seen what you’ve been through, and want to take a similar step, what do you say? Having come out the other end of Ghostbusters?

Think about it and make sure you’re passionate about it. That you’re doing it for the right reason, that makes sense to you. Then you just have to do it. The bullies, or the people who don’t know what’s in your head: if you allow them to control what you’re going to do, then that’s a very bad play for entertainment and creativity, and I think that’s not a good thing. Let it be the thing that makes sure you are committed to it, and know what you’re doing. That you have that strong an opinion and a take on it.

If you do, and you can pass all those Litmus tests, then you just have to do it.

And anything specific based on what you’ve gone through?

Be sympathetic to the people who are worried for good reasons. And the ones who have a problem for bad reasons – so anyone who comes at me on this and their problem is that it’s women, making fun of their appearance, issues they haven’t resolved with women – that’s a non-starter. Their opinion has to mean nothing to you. It’s a weird, antiquated opinion. They’re bullies.

To everybody else who has legitimate things: then hear what they have a problem with. When suddenly people say that to me if it was a sequel rather than a reboot, they’d be happier? I get that now. But this is the only way I knew how to do this film. I feel terrible that people wish it was a sequel, but I can tell you a million reasons why I had to do it this way. This was the way I thought was the most respectful way to do it, to the original franchise. And they can tear me apart for that, say fuck you, and I get that, totally.

All I can tell you that, in my head, this is why I did it, and it’s good natured reasoning. I love everything about this world. But I also love doing original things. One of my biggest regrets in life is I didn’t invent Ghostbusters! [Laughs]

It seems sporting then, at this stage, that we end with you giving me an exclusive on Spy 2. Feel free to put it in your own words.

[Laughs] I would love to Spy 2, no doubt about that!

Maybe a Rick Ford/Jason Statham spin-off movie?

I have to say, of everything I’ve come up with in my career, Rick Ford is my proudest invention! Statham is my hero!

Spy is a masterclass in potty-mouth comedy…

I only do swearing in my movies when people can do it in a way that’s fun. Melissa, for instance…

Got to stop you there: Statham. Melissa’s good, but clearly we’re talking Statham.

[laughs] Oh my god. He was saying to me on the set of Spy, ‘can I swear?’ I’m like, ‘swear more! Swear more!’

That’s our guy. Paul Feig, thank you very much.

Ghostbusters arrives in the UK on July 11th. Our review of the film will be live when the official embargo – common for pretty much all big blockbusters – closer to release.

This interview was updated to clarify that Katie Dippold wrote the screenplay for The Heat 2, after she and Paul Feig came up with the story for it.