It’s not often that casting news on a Hollywood blockbuster warrants a post-midnight text with three exclamation marks, but that’s exactly what arrived on my phone in the early hours of this morning, when Paul Feig tweeted this picture of his new Ghostbusters cast.
— Paul Feig (@paulfeig) January 27, 2015
The all-female line-up is not news, with Feig taking the decision to reboot rather than simply remake the 1984 original last year. It’s also no big shock that Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy are on board, given that Feig has worked with both before, on Bridesmaids and with McCarthy again on The Heat. What is remarkable is how galvanising this announcement feels, not least because of all the predictable noise around it.
Original Ghostbuster Ernie Hudson was less than enthusiastic about Feig’s plans in October.
I love females. I hope that if they go that way at least they’ll be funny, and if they’re not funny at least hopefully it’ll be sexy. I love the idea of including women, I think that’s great. But all-female I think would be a bad idea. I don’t think the fans want to see that.”
Hopefully, Ernie! Fingers crossed that if these unwanted women can’t be funny then at the very least, those boiler suits will be shrunk into bikinis and we’ll get an eyeful of paranormal-busting cleavage. Phwoar, ghosts.
With this cast, it’s likely to be very funny indeed. Last time Wiig and McCarthy were on the big screen together, in Bridesmaids, they were wrestling on a sofa to a backdrop of Tom Hanks in Cast Away. Both have been in search of a role that does them justice since. While Wiig has followed a largely indie path, McCarthy has been better than the handful of clumsy comedies she has appeared in (with the exception of another Feig project, The Heat, which was far better than its weird rom-com-ish marketing suggested).
Better still, Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones will don the other proton packs. Both are largely unknown in the UK, but McKinnon has been the breakout star of SNL since she joined in 2012, and last year EW named her the show’s Most Valuable Player. She’s done Ellen, Angela Merkel and the amateur artist who famously ‘fixed’ the painting of Christ, but her most famous impersonation, of a swaggery, posing Justin Bieber, is unnervingly accurate.
Jones, meanwhile, was promoted from SNL writer to regular player last year, despite some controversy over a sharp, clever satirical joke about slavery back in May. Both have been key in making SNL more vital than it has been in years – in fact, it’s at its strongest since Wiig was a regular.
It is frustrating that diversity is still noteworthy – in an ideal world, last night’s text would have had one exclamation mark, instead of three - but Ernie Hudson’s comments and the many thousands like it only prove that it is as necessary as ever. As the recent Oscar nominations furore showed, Hollywood remains a world of old white men, with the odd young white thin woman allowed into the club. If you listen to Russell Crowe, of course, women over 40 only have themselves to blame for the lack of decent roles out there.
Three of the four new Ghostbusters are over 40. One is a black woman. McKinnon is an out gay woman. Ghostbusters is one of film history’s biggest franchises and this reboot will inevitably be one of the most hyped and scrutinised projects of the next 12 months. Putting Wiig, McCarthy, Jones and McKinnon at the front of it feels like more than just good casting. It feels like a little victory.