Sony started the fireworks Wednesday for Paul Feig’s estrogen-fueled reboot of Ghostbusters by showing off the trailer in advance before a select group to standing-ovation results. The movie is slated for a July 15 release. 
 
 Since the project was first announced and kept largely under wraps (some actors’ reps weren’t even privy to the pages their clients were reading), Ghostbusters has faced its fair share of scrutiny by the media for changing the protagonists from men to women. Feig told the crowd at the Sony mini-event that he’s “relieved for the moment, before it’s released to the world.” Producer Ivan Reitman was more certain about the crowd’s response to the trailer, saying, “I’m confident.” 
 
 To the point of the creative decision to switch the genders on Ghostbusters, Feig explained: “Ghostbusters are for everybody. The first movie worked because it had four of the funniest people and I just want the funniest people — and the funniest people are these women.” 
 
 Added screenwriter and co-producer Katie Dippold, who worked with Feig on The Heat, “This is a story, if you placed men in those characters, you could do it. It’s pretty genderless.” 
 
 The reboot was one of the last big projects pushed through by former Sony chief Amy Pascal during her tenure at the studio before The Hack took its toll on the studio. For years, Sony wanted to reboot the film with Bill Murray returning as Peter Venkman and chased him with two scripts. But it was a challenge to get him to read them. Reitman was always a part of the equation. Following the death of Ghostbusters star and scribe Harold Ramis in 2014, Reitman decided to turn over the directing reins. 
 
 Not much has been known until now about the film. Kristen Wiig playsparticle physicist Erin, Melissa McCarthy’s character is an expert in the paranormal, Kate McKinnon’s the nuclear engineer who creates the team’s inventions, and Leslie Jones is a former subway employee who knows her way around New York City. 
 
 The plot per Wiig’s character? As she described her, “Someone had created a device that has amplified paranormal activity and we might be the only ones who can stop it.” Feig mentioned that a number of the Ghostbusters staples that we’re familiar with will definitely make their way into the film, hopefully in a surprising way. Count on a cameo by the round, fat, toothy ghost Slimer, who Reitman said was initially nicknamed in early drafts of the first film as “The Belushi ghost, because he ate all the time.” Dan Ackroyd originally conceived Ghostbusters as a vehicle for him and his SNL and Blues Brothers pal. 
 
 As far as the music goes, Feig says it’s essential to have a portion of the original Ray Parker Jr. title song in the movie. There also will be a new version of that tune. As to whether they’re reusing Elmer Bernstein’s now-familiar themes, Feig said that composer Theodore Shapiro is “doing an amazing theme and we’re playing with a lot of different themes. I want this to be big, spooky and cool.” Feig worked with Shapiro on Spy. 
 
 A majority of those who showed up, and even flew into L.A. for the event at Sony’s Cary Grant Theatre, were mega-fans, guys who dress up like Ghostbusters and visit children’s hospitals around the country. After the trailer ran a first time, they shouted for it to play again. 
 
 Previously announced, Sony also has a guy counterpart Ghostbusters in the works as announced by Deadline last March with Channing Tatum producing and Joe and Anthony Russo directing. ||||| I Ain't Afraid Of No Fanboys: Quirky Performances Enliven New 'Ghostbusters' 
 
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 We are haunted by the original Ghostbusters, but it is a mostly benevolent haunting: a Class III apparition, at best. Indelible moments from the film have caused little disturbances in pop-culture's memory hole over the last 32 years — the rad Ray Parker Jr. theme music, the Marshmallow Man, the library chase that's become a part of the fabric of New York itself. The movie is the poster child for the rare Hollywood blockbuster that walks between two worlds: the world of stuff designed to make money, and the world of stuff that entertains. In other words, between the dead and the living. 
 
 Director Paul Feig and screenwriter Katie Dippold (The Heat) know that the substantial challenge in front of the Ghostbusters reboot is the same challenge facing any reboot: to both feel like fresh entertainment and, conversely, conjure nostalgia for the ghost over its shoulder. So though they deviate from the first film in tone (there are few serious attempts to scare the audience, for instance), they acknowledge the spectral presence of Ivan Reitman's predecessor, with cameos and callbacks galore, including the same unflattering beige exterminator jumpsuits and a title card that blares the opening bass line of that theme music like a funky Batsignal. History is safe for another day, even if some ghastly figures on the Internet refuse to believe it. (Question for the class: If a transparent demon slimes a keyboard, is that the same thing as an opinion?) 
 
 Well anyway, as a wise woman says here, "You're not supposed to listen to what crazy people write in the middle of the night online." That woman is Melissa McCarthy, whose sharp-n-snappy paranormal investigator Abby Yates tips her hat to the audience early in the film so she can lay down the law. Enough vitriol. When Abby and her colleagues jump up and down with glee after nabbing particularly spooky baddies, they're telling us something: Bustin' makes them feel good. 
 
 Abby is one-quarter of the new, all-female spook exterminator team, along with longtime friend Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig); the two once co-authored a book on ghosts before Erin, unable to conjure up concrete evidence for her theories, retreated into academia instead. But Abby kept up the action, conducting experiments from the basement of a less-than-reputable university (the dean has forgotten she's there). When demons start shaking up New York, the two strap on some proton packs in a rented space above a Chinese restaurant for hijinks and a little too much scientific jargon. 
 
 Wiig and McCarthy have a natural give-and-take comic chemistry, as we first learned in Feig's Bridesmaids. While Wiig's patented brand of stammering out the punchlines under her breath isn't always the best fit for this material, and her character's obsession with the hunky, dim receptionist (Chris Hemsworth) lacks a big payoff, she shines when she's able to swing for the fences, as when she hysterically warns the mayor (Andy Garcia) to evacuate the city. McCarthy, as she's done before when she didn't have CGI monsters to compete with, corrals the room in every situation, whether picking fights with a delivery boy over the number of wantons in her soup or going rogue after a possession by an occult-obsessed loner (Neil Casey). 
 
 But the real star of Ghostbusters is one Kate McKinnon, her of the bountiful Saturday Night Live impressions, as an irreverent sidekick who presents dangerous gadgets in tossed-off fashion ("it's basically a nuclear bomb strapped to the roof of the car"). In her wily line delivery and cocksure swagger, McKinnon resembles nothing if not a young Bill Murray. Through her thick goggles is the impish spark that keeps movies like this in orbit. 
 
 As in the original, the busters are all played by veterans of improv — the cast is rounded out by the boisterous Leslie Jones, also of SNL, in the Ernie Hudson role as a transit worker who sees some spooks and signs up for action. Yet this cast feels more constrained by the machinations that power a 2016 blockbuster. So the new film never manages to be quite as transcendently fun as it should, and suffers from clunky plotting and bumpy editing that reeks of studio nervousness. Ideas that should play like Ghostbuster gangbusters, such as a demonic presence infiltrating a heavy metal convention, sputter in the homestretch. At one point Feig sets the stage for a show-stopping dance number, only to abandon it until the end credits without substituting any sort of iconic set-piece. 
 
 Still, sloppiness doesn't matter as much if the new Ghostbusters can haunt even a little, and it does. Sporadically, and with considerable assist from McKinnon, it provides the goofy summer fun we want in a movie about comedians hunting the supernatural. Bridging those worlds is tough. If a film succeeds even a little ... well, it's a bit spooky. ||||| LOS ANGELES, March 10 (UPI) — Less than two months after announcing the cast of the highly anticipated all-female Ghostbusters 3, Sony Pictures is reportedly planning a male-led Ghostbusters reboot starring Channing Tatum. 
 
 Deadline reported Tuesday that Sony will form Ghost Corps, a new production company helmed by original Ghostbusters producer Ivan Reitman and writer/actor Dan Aykroyd. 
 
 First on their agenda would be another Ghostbusters film, possibly starring Tatum. 
 
 “We want to expand the Ghostbusters universe in ways that will include different films, TV shows, merchandise, all things that are part of modern filmed entertainment,” Reitman said. 
 
 Sony announced in January that Ghostbusters 3, directed by Paul Feig, would star Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon. 
 
 Aykroyd said at the time that he was “delighted” the Ghostbusters franchise had been passed on to “these most magnificent women in comedy.” 
 
 “My great grandfather, Dr. Sam Aykroyd, the original Ghostbuster, was a man who empowered women in his day, and this is a beautiful development in the legacy of our family business,” he said. ||||| Prime your proton packs, because it's not long now before the Ghostbusters reboot haunts theaters worldwide. We've already seen a few promo photos and set shots from the film, but today we've got our first honest-to-goodness trailer. And oh boy, does it have us intrigued. The new supernatural-ass-kicking squad stars Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones, all with distinct skills and personalities. The teaser runs for about two and a half minutes and features plenty of ghouls and other Ghostbuster staples, such as the gang's iconic uniforms, the Ecto-1, and the classic theme tune. July 15th can't come soon enough.
– The first full trailer for the all-female Ghostbusters reboot is here, and the feedback is good: io9 calls it "perfect," and Deadline reports that Sony's official unveiling event Wednesday was attended by a number of "mega-fans" who gave it a standing ovation and "shouted for it to play again." The movie, out July 15, stars Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones. "It looks pretty damn good," declares MoviePilot.com. Engadget's take: "Oh boy, does it have us intrigued."