Director Paul Feig looked back on the negative reception his all-female Ghostbusters reboot received in 2016 after it became the subject of a right-wing pile-on that he claims was spurred by “Trump supporters.”
The reboot starred Leslie Jones, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon as a team of ghostbusters who try to stop a paranormal invasion. Speaking to The Guardian, Feig noted that the film came out during a particularly tense presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
“The political climate of the time was really weird, with Hillary Clinton running for office in 2016,” Feig said. “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. Then Trump came out against us. 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.”
He added, “Everybody went fucking 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 …,'” he said. “I didn’t think it mattered at all that the main characters were women, but people brought a lot of baggage.”
The cast also faced extensive online harassment due to the film.
Jones reflected on the racist harassment she faced on social media in her 2023 memoir Leslie F***ing Jones. “I can’t believe anyone would do this shit to someone, anyone, for working. This is awful. I am in a movie. Death threats for something as small as that?” she wrote, per Rolling Stone.
She also called out director Jason Reitman, son of the original Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman, for saying he was “trying to go back to the original technique and hand the movie back to the fans” with his 2021 installment Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
“The damage was done. Bringing up the idea of giving the movie ‘back to the fans’ was a pretty clear shout-out to all those losers who went after us for making an all-female film,” she said.
But the ladies had some people on their side. Original Ghostbuster Dan Aykroyd said he “loved” Feig’s take on the franchise.
“I liked the movie Paul Feig made with those spectacular women,” Aykroyd told People earlier this year.
He added, “I loved so much of it. And of course […] you’re never going to do better than that [cast]. So I go on the record as saying I’m so proud to have been able to license that movie and have a hand and have a part in it, and I’m fully supportive of it, and I don’t besmirch it at all. I think it works really great amongst all the ones that have been made.”