Got some news for you guys:
The production is casting metalhead looking extras and talent for a concert scene which they'll shoot at the Wang Theater this week or next.
The new ghost trap looks like an industrial-strength dustbuster and it straps onto the bottom of the pack with really strong/tight cables.
The script for Dan's scene simply has Erin hailing a cab, the cabbie asks where she's going. She tells him she's heading to Chinatown, and he just says "nah" and drives off, leaving her behind and throwing her hands up in the air. This, of course, translated to the "I ain't afraid of no ghost" dialogue with her yelling after him "That's a double-negative! That means you ARE afraid of ghosts!" :rolleyes
Erm....ok.
So, Dan's scene isn't going to be the "I ain't afraid of no ghosts" scene? It's just:
"Where ya headed?"
"Chinatown."
"Nah." >vroom<
>exasperated hands in air<
And that's it? Honestly, what the hell is the point of that? That's like the (wisely) deleted scene of Akroyd and Murray as bums in the park from the original. There's literally no reason to have it except to say "And Dan gets a milisecond of screen time."
As for the metalhead concert thing, ok, whatever. Pretty much this all just keeps coming back, for me, to the notion of "Why'd ya bother?" Why make it this different if you want to capture what made the original great? Why reference the original as much as they appear to be, if you want to make yours different? And why not...just do a sequel? You can literally do all of this in a way that maintains the original material, writes out the old cast who are dead or don't want to be in it, and still connects to the original story.
I think I've figured out the reason for the reboot, though, and the desire to avoid continuity. Originally, Feig proposed some idea involving government coverups in sequels to this relaunch film. However, they may very well ditch that (I'd figure that a ghost T-Rex would be hard to cover up, as would possessed soldiers). The thing is, by rebooting the continuity, their
sequel options are wide open. They can take the story in any direction they want, once they've done this highly derivative relaunch film. Government conspiracies, secret societies, inter-dimensional alien space gods, whatever. And that, ultimately, is way more important to them. Only some of those would work in the original continuity. Government coverups? Definitely not. Alien space gods (think C'thulhu)? Nope. Not at all. But secret societies or necromancers or other stuff in that general wheelhouse, that'd fit with the old stuff. The thing is, the old stuff does limit what you can do with the story.
I don't think it does so in a
bad way, but I recognize that for a studio looking to relaunch a brand, there's value in
not having any storytelling options foreclosed.