Director Paul Feig made an apparent announcement over Twitter about the all-female cast that will star in the upcoming reboot of the 1980s supernatural comedy classic Ghostbusters.
Actresses Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig, who have both worked with Feig in his 2011 romantic comedy Bridesmaids, have signed on to take two of the four lead roles in the film.
Completing the foursome are Leslie Jones, who is being promoted as a feature player in Saturday Night Live after joining last year, and Kate McKinnon, who was nominated for an Emmy for her performance on SNL.
Feig did not categorically say that the four will star as the four specter-hunters in the Ghostbusters reboot, but he did post an uncaptioned image of all four actresses on his Twitter page.
Around the same time Feig took to Twitter, Hollywood Reporter said McCarthy, Wiig, Jones and McKinnon will be starring in the upcoming film, while negotiations are still ongoing for the rest of the cast.
In other news, #Ghostbusters will be hitting theaters July 22, 2016. Save the date!
— Paul Feig (@paulfeig) January 28, 2015
Rumors about a new Ghostbusters movie with an all-female cast have been making the rounds of Hollywood's gossip columns for years. At one time, actresses Eliza Dushku, whose breakout role was Faith in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Alyssa Milano, who voiced Dr. Ilyssa Selwyn in Ghostbusters: The Video Game in 2010, were said to be part of the rumored cast.
Emma Stone, Rebel Wilson and Jennifer Lawrence have also been named as the prospective cast in what was deemed as a "passing the torch" movie where original cast member Dan Aykroyd would appear at the film's beginning to send the new Ghostbusters on their way.
The original project was said to have been headed by director Ivan Reitman, who filmed the original film in 1984, and original cast members Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson were said to have agreed to reprise their roles. Bill Murray, however, declined to reappear onscreen as Dr. Peter Venkman. When Ramis passed away last year, Reitman decided to hand the project over to Feig.
Feig admits he has a lot of pressure pinning him down right now, saying that remaking an iconic franchise is never an easy ride.
"There are a lot of haters," he said. "I get bombarded every day on Twitter. It's kind of a drag but I get it. It's kind of a sacred thing that people grew up with."
Still, he is confident that the Ghostbusters reboot will be a success, with Reitman behind him all the way as the film's producer.
"I just hope they give it a chance because the current script -- and we're rewriting it all the time -- is really funny. Ivan Reitman is producing it and he loves the script and Dan has read it and really liked it," Feig said. "I just hope people judge it on its own merits."
