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. ||||| Not only does it have the most dislikes for a trailer on the social platform, but it also makes the top 25 most disliked videos overall. 
 
 Things are not boding well for director Paul Feig's upcoming Ghostbusters based on the film's first official trailer on YouTube. 
 
 Released March 3, the trailer, viewed 29.2 million times and counting, is the most disliked movie trailer in YouTube history, according to "MyTop100Videos" channel's "Most Disliked Videos" list that was last updated April 16. (Justin Bieber comes in at No. 1 with 5.99 million dislikes for "Baby.") 
 
 Coming in at No. 23, the reboot — starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones and Chris Hemsworth — has more than double the number of dislikes as likes (208,606). 
 
 Thirty years following the release of the original Ghostbusters, directed by Ivan Reitman and starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson, Feig opted to switch up the all-male cast for a female-led reboot. 
 
 On the day of the trailer's release, the director said on the Sony lot before journalists and fans: "I was a comedy fan, but I had not seen something like this — combining comedy with science and the supernatural and action. When Ivan asked if I would be interested in doing a new one, it blew my mind. I love the idea that a new generation is going to have their own Ghostbusters. … It was important to capture the heart of what we loved about the original but also bring something new." 
 
 YouTube user Crippled Camel wrote of his opinion of the trailer: "I signed in under both of my accounts so that I could dislike this twice" — his comment has been liked by more than 1,000 fellow users. 
 
 Although there has been controversy over the trailer, with many YouTube comments centered around the all-female cast, the video has been generating mostly positive reviews on Facebook with 1,186,569 positive reactions (like, love, haha and wow) and 32,589 negative reactions (sad, angry). The reactions add up to 97.3 percent positive sentiments on Facebook overall. 
 
 The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Feig for comment. 
 
 Ghostbusters is set to hit theaters July 22. ||||| 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. ||||| Thirty years after the original film, "Ghostbusters" is back with a female cast starring Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones. ( / Columbia Pictures) 
 
 Sunny, slimy and profoundly silly, the new, lady-centric reboot of “Ghostbusters” immediately silences the backlash and bluster that’s preceded it. Never deigning to take the skeptical and just plain sexist bait that’s been thrown its way since the project was first announced — and that came in buckets when the first trailer was released — this jokey ensemble piece seems engineered to remind viewers of what it was meant to be all along: neither a workhorse for arguments about gender politics nor a Trojan horse for desecrating precious generational shibboleths, but simply an easygoing, enjoyable family comedy. 
 
 Headed by a cast that includes Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy, this iteration possesses the same casual, unforced humor that made the 1984 original a virtual instant classic. Once again set in Manhattan, “Ghostbusters” opens with a funny-scary set piece, wherein a tour guide at a posh 19th-century mansion is seen bragging about the stately home’s “face bidet” and “anti-Irish security fence” one moment, and then fending off an oozing tsunami of familiar green goo the next. 
 
 [Thanks, guys: Going to see the all-female ‘Ghostbuster’s is now a political act] 
 
 Who ya gonna call? Erin Gilbert (Wiig), of course. She’s a paranormal researcher and Columbia University instructor whose book, “Ghosts From Our Past: Both Literally and Figuratively,” was co-written with her childhood friend Abby (McCarthy). Although Erin has since recanted her belief in ectoplasmic life, Abby is still determined to catch and examine a real-life ghost — now with the help of her new research partner, Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon). 
 
 McKinnon, it bears noting, delivers a star-making turn in “Ghostbusters,” her eccentric, faintly amused gearhead stealing every scene, much in the way Bill Murray made the most of his moments in the earlier film. Existing in her own enigmatic bubble of non sequiturs and private jokes, she pokes her head out occasionally to utter some arcane piece of technical mumbo jumbo or to munch from a can of Pringles (“salty parabolas,” as she calls them). McKinnon’s Holtzmann is the straw that stirs the drink throughout “Ghostbusters,” her performance one that easily could have been an exercise in phoned-in snark, but instead proves to be an example of genuinely smart, specific and confoundingly funny characterization. 
 
 She's known now for "Saturday Night Live" and the "Ghostbusters" revival, but once upon a time Kate McKinnon was part of a web series called "Vag Magazine." Here's a look back at her career. (Nicki DeMarco/The Washington Post) 
 
 Indeed, Wiig and McCarthy mostly act as deadpan comic foils to McKinnon’s inspired lunacy, which, like everything else about “Ghostbusters,” possesses the quiet, good-natured rhythms of a comedy that largely resists hysterical overreach. When Leslie Jones — as a freaked-out MTA worker and aficionado of early Manhattan history — joins the team, she brings along her own expertly delivered one-liners (not to mention her uncle’s hearse). Chris Hemsworth, as the Ghostbusters’ studly receptionist, gives Channing Tatum a run for his money in a cleverly revisionist take on cinema’s so-called dumb blondes, from Marilyn Monroe to Judy Holliday. “Who ordered the Clark Kent stripper-gram?” someone asks, when he shows up at one point. 
 
 [Trolls are doing whatever they can to bring down the ‘Ghostbusters’ reboot] 
 
 Hemsworth’s objectified secretary is one of the few times sexism is explicitly invoked in “Ghostbusters,” in which director Paul Feig and his co-writer, Katie Dippold, couldn’t help but include a few digs at the movie’s online haters. Still, the mood is more playful than polemical in a movie that leaves poisonous culture wars behind for a brighter, shinier, goofier world — albeit one in which the firehouse where the first Ghostbusters made their headquarters now fetches $21,000 a month. 
 
 
 
 Slimer. (Hopper Stone/SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT) 
 
 Gertrude the Ghost. (Hopper Stone/SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT) 
 
 The original guys, by the way, are mostly all on hand for cameos in “Ghostbusters” — even the late Harold Ramis, who is appropriately honored in memoriam in an early scene. Some work better than others, as can be said of all the film’s supporting performances. Cecily Strong, for example, falls surprisingly flat as an aide to the mayor, her cadences oddly similar to McKinnon’s own casual, borderline-bored delivery. 
 
 Even as it ambles along at its own adamantly un-self-important pace, “Ghostbusters” reaches a fatal turning point in the third act, when it descends into an engulfing chaos of CGI effects, blue and green smoke and drawn-out, repetitive mayhem for its own sake. Of a piece with the bigger-longer-louder endings most action movies revert to these days, the endgame of “Ghostbusters” feels utterly at odds with the rest of the movie’s refreshingly low-key tone. But that vibe returns during the film’s fun finale and end-credits crawl, as well as in a final-final stinger that diehard fans won’t want to miss. For all the high dudgeon with which the movie has been anticipated, it turns out that “Ghostbusters” — like the girls who cheerfully dominate it this time around — just wants to have fun. And it does.
– 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."