UPDATE: Feig spoke with Entertainment Weekly about his vision for the project, providing some additional details. More quotes from him below.

Rejoice! While we've known for a while that 'Bridesmaids' director Paul Feig would be helming the upcoming female-centric 'Ghostbusters' reboot, today we have another development: not only is Feig directing the reboot, which will definitely be a separate entity from the original 'Ghostbusters' films, but the project will re-team him with Katie Dippold, who wrote the screenplay for Feig's buddy cop comedy 'The Heat.' This is pretty much the best news since, well, the news that we're getting an all-female 'Ghostbusters' movie.

THR reports that Dippold has been hired to pen the script with Feig, which will focus on a new team of 'Ghostbusters,' all of whom will be women. A third 'Ghostbusters' film has been languishing in development hell for years, and the less said about that sequel's issues, the better. It seemed that, aside from Dan Aykroyd, no one was really excited about the prospect of a third 'Ghostbusters' film.

That is, until Paul Feig came on board with the promise of an all-female 'Ghostbusters' reboot, entirely separate from the original series, rejuvenating the franchise. In just a few short years, Feig has already made his mark as a director whose films are not only hilarious, but are frank and speak strongly to women -- they're also proving that women are a big draw at the box office.

With the addition of Dippold, the new 'Ghostbusters' film will also have a clear female voice behind it. Dippold is a wise choice given her smart, funny, and surprisingly touching script for 'The Heat,' a film that explored the dynamics of female friendship in clever ways -- and isn't that at least one of the elements we want to see in a new 'Ghostbusters' with a cast of women? (She also recently completed a script for a sequel to 'The Heat'!)

In an interview with EW, Feig spoke at length about his vision for the project, which will definitely be a total reboot, while also assuring fans of the original series that he's just as much a fan as you are and doesn't want to ruin your memories:

I love the first one so much I don’t want to do anything to ruin the memory of that. So it just felt like, let’s just restart it because then we can have new dynamics. I want the technology to be even cooler. I want it to be really scary, and I want it to happen in our world today that hasn’t gone through it so it’s like, oh my God what’s going on?

Feig also expressed that the door is wide open for cameos from anyone from the original series who wants to participate, and while he and writer Katie Dippold have a desire to work in clever nods to the original films, they don't want to be beholden to the character archetypes or stories. Casting has not yet begun for the reboot, but Feig says they do have an outline for the script:

We have a very rough, rough outline that we’re working with, but definitely know the basic story, know what we want the basic characters to do, know what we want the world to do and what the rules of our world are, but nothing I want to discuss obviously. It’s cool. I think it’s a really strong origin story that feels real—as real as a ghost story is. It’s going to be really fun and real. We’ll make it scary and funny.

The rest of the interview is a fantastic read, and Feig also discusses why he loves working with funny women, why his reboot is definitely not a gimmick (regardless of what some critics have said), and he even talks about Dippold's script for 'The Heat 2,' which is pretty much dependent upon Sandra Bullock's involvement at this point.


It shouldn't be long now before we start hearing about the hilarious women he's casting, but ahem, Mr. Feig, if I may be so humble, I came up with a list of ideas recently for some actresses who might be suitable.

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