Director Paul Feig tweets that McCarthy and Wiig will be joined by Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon as leads in all-female reboot of beloved 80s film

If you’re looking to remake one of Hollywood’s best-loved ghostfighting franchises, who are you going to call? Four of America’s funniest women it would seem.

Paul Feig, who is to direct a new ­version of the 1984 classic Ghostbusters, has revealed the four actors who will be stepping into the supernatural shoes of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson – and they are all women.



Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig, who both found fame with Feig-directed comedy Bridesmaids in 2011, will be joined by Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon as the main characters in the franchise reboot which will begin shooting this summer. It will be released in July 2016.



The move was announced by Feig over Twitter on Tuesday and has been praised for its ­defiance of Hollywood stereotypes, with three of the four actors aged over 40. While Jones and McKinnon are ­relatively unknown outside the US, both have established themselves as comedy actors on the sketch show Saturday Night Live. Jones, 47, only made her appearance on the show last year, having previously been one of the writers, while McKinnon, 31, joined in 2012, and received an Emmy nomination last year for her performance.



The original 1984 Ghostbusters, directed by Ivan Reitman, made almost $300m at the global box office and was followed by Ghostbusters II five years later.

However, the new version of Ghostbusters has had a complicated gestation. A sequel with the original cast 30 years on and Reitman again at the directorial helm was scuppered when Bill Murray declined to sign up, then scrapped completely after the death of Harold Ramis last year. After being approached to direct the project, Feig decided to cast all female actors and make an entirely new film rather than a sequel.



Feig told Entertainment Weekly: “I love the first one so much I don’t want to do anything to ruin the memory of that. 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.”

Ernie Hudson, who starred in the original film, was critical of the idea, saying: “If it has nothing to do with the other two movies, and it’s all female, then why are you calling it Ghostbusters?



“I love females,” he added. “I hope that if they go that way at least they’ll be funny, and if they’re not funny at least hopefully it’ll be sexy. I love the idea of including women, I think that’s great.



“But all-female I think would be a bad idea. I don’t think the fans want to see that.”



However, his co-star Murray disagreed. In a recent interview with the Toronto Star, he gave his views on what was then only speculation. “Melissa [McCarthy] would be a spectacular Ghostbuster. And Kristen Wiig is so funny – God, she’s funny!” he said. Asked his opinion on an all-female cast, Murray added: “It sounds great to me. I would watch it.”

