Paul Feig recalls Trump fueling female ‘Ghostbusters’ hate in 2016

Paul Feig‘s 2016 Ghostbusters reboot became the target of one of the most intense misogyny campaigns in movie history — and the filmmaker thinks Donald Trump is partly to blame for it.

Paul Feig; Donald Trump.

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Feig recently reflected on all the online hatred his action-comedy endured in the mid-2010s. “The political climate of the time was really weird, with Hillary Clinton running for office in 2016,” he recalled in a new interview with The Guardian promoting his latest film, Jackpot. “There were a lot of dudes looking for a fight. When I was getting piled on, on Twitter, I’d go back and see who they were. So many were Trump supporters.”

Feig noted that the man who would become the U.S. president added fuel to the fire. “Then Trump came out against us,” he said. “He was like: ‘They’re remaking Indiana Jones without Harrison Ford. You can’t do that. And now they’re making Ghostbusters with only women. What’s going on?’ and got all upset.”

The Bridesmaids director continued, “Everybody went f—ing cannibal. It turned the movie into a political statement, as if to say: ‘If you’re pro-women, you’re going to go see this. If you’re not, then …’ I didn’t think it mattered at all that the main characters were women, but people brought a lot of baggage.”

Feig’s Ghostbusters starred his Bridesmaids collaborators Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy as two new supernatural exterminators in a universe that makes no mention of the 1984 original or its 1989 sequel. Saturday Night Live stars Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon rounded out the phantom-busting quartet, and Chris Hemsworth played their airheaded receptionist, while original Ghostbusters stars Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, and Annie Potts all made cameos as new characters.

Feig opted to make his entry into the franchise a reboot instead of a sequel because he didn’t have the full participation of the original cast. “Bill [Murray] had publicly said he didn’t want to do another Ghostbusters at that point,” Feig recalled to The Guardian. “Harold Ramis had died. Dan [Aykroyd] and Ernie [Hudson] were there, but half the team felt weird. It had been 30 years and Bill and the gang were so iconic; I didn’t want to do anything that hurt the original movies.”

The 2016 Ghostbusters ultimately grossed around $229 million worldwide on a $144 million budget, and received a 60/100 on Metascore, a 74 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and a B+ Cinemascore.

As Sony engineered the future of the franchise, the studio decided the next two installments, 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife and 2024’s Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, would be direct sequels to the ’80s movies instead of reboots or reimaginings. Both of those films made less at the box office than the 2016 version — around $204 million and $201 million, respectively — but they were more profitable due to their smaller budgets.