On Friday, Cleveland's NBC-affiliate WKYC published a vague report saying Ghostbusters 3 has been penciled in to film in the city. Without citing anything other than a single sentence, the report is being questioned since nothing has been confirmed by Sony or the Cleveland Film Commission.
Quick side note: It needs to be stated WKYC's headline was changed since it was originally published. See this in the screenshots at the end of this post. One is of the original headline as it appeared on Facebook after initially being published and the other screenshot is of its current—and edited after it was originally posted online—headline right now.
Meanwhile, since this report broke, The Daily SuperHero has been reaching out to local—remember I am based in Cleveland—sources to find out any information regarding the possibility of this report being true. As of the time of this article publishing, here's what The Daily SuperHero has been told.
- On June 7, 2013, while director Ivan Reitman was in the middle of filming the Cleveland Browns football movie Draft Day around town, actor and Ghostbusters franchise helmer Dan Aykroyd was in town to meet with Reitman and they talked about Ghostbusters 3. This is confirmed in Aykroyd's comments to ShortList.com, click here to read it.
- A person who has worked on big films that have filmed in Cleveland (including The Avengers and Draft Day) was contacted by The Daily SuperHero. He confirmed Reitman loved filming Draft Day in Cleveland and the director loves the city so much he would like to come back to film more movies in the future.
- Another source, who is close to the Cleveland Film Commission, has said there are active talks about bringing in at least one big Hollywood blockbuster film production to shoot in Cleveland every summer and Ghostbusters 3 has been mentioned but is definitely not official or a closed deal.
- Cleveland's local newspaper, The Plain Dealer, was contacted and they have neither confirmed or denied the report saying Ghostbusters 3 might film in the city in spring 2014. Their only comment was, "we are also looking into this to confirm it right now."
- Sony Pictures, who owns the franchise rights for Ghostbusters when they bought Columbia Pictures, has no comment.
All-in-all, nothing on this front. However, it needs to be said again that this report does have a tiny bit of legs to it since there are connections that can be made based on what some of The Daily SuperHero's local sources have said above.
And here's the screenshot of the original headline compared to the current headline on WKYC's source article, as mentioned at the beginning of this post.
