Casper the Friendly Ghost Went After Bill Murray’s Iconic Ghostbusters Franchise Only To Lose For the Silliest Reason
Bill Murray is one of the most iconic actors, known for his deadpan delivery in all kinds of projects. In 1972, started his career as a member of an improvisational comedy troupe named The Second City in Chicago at his older brother’s invitation. He did land a starring role in a film until 1979 when he appeared in Meatballs.
Meatballs established Bill Murray as a recognized actor and laid the foundation for director Ivan Reitman’s career. Murray and Reitman went on to collaborate on several other commercially successful comedies such as Stripes and Ghostbusters. The latter of these continues to be one of the classic ghost movies and even spawned sequels. Harvey Comics who created Casper the Friendly Ghost sued Ghostbusters over the film’s logo.
Bill Murray’s Ghostbusters Was Sued by Harvey Comics
Bill Murray collaborated with writer Harold Ramis on several projects. One of these was the 1984 supernatural comedy Ghostbusters. Murray agreed to do the movie with Colombia Pictures because he needed funding for the film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s novel The Razor’s Edge. While Ghostbusters was the second-highest-grossing movie of 1984 in the United States and Canada, The Razor’s Edge was a box-office bomb.
Harvey Comics who owned the likeness of Casper found the Ghostbusters logo a little too similar to the Casper character ‘Fatso’. However, the court ruled against them as they believed that there were only so many ways to draw a ghost.
The Ghostbusters movie featured its writers Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis in starring roles. Murray, Aykroyd, and Ramis played the role of three eccentric New York-based parapsychologists who started the business of catching ghosts. The movie also stars Sigourney Weaver although her casting was initially opposed because of her reputation of only playing serious roles.
A sequel to the movie Ghostbusters II was released in 1989. It did not do as well as the first movie. Following Ramis’s death, a reboot of the original Ghostbusters movie was released to mixed reviews in 2016.
Bill Murray Liked Ghostbusters: Afterlife More Than the Other Ghostbusters Movies
Bill Murray was surprised to find out that Ivan Reitman’s son Jason Reitman had come up with a script for a Ghostbusters movie. Murray had attended Jason Reitman’s Bar Mitzvah so he found it really interesting that a guy as young as him could have come up with ideas for a Ghostbusters movie. To his utter surprise, the idea was really great.
In an interview with Collider, Bill Murray stated that he felt that Ghostbusters: Afterlife actually has the feel of the first movie. He said:
“But he [Jason Reitman] had a really, really wonderful idea that he wrote with another wonderful guy that I got to work with, Gil Kenan, who made City of Ember. The two of them wrote a Ghostbusters movie that really brings it back to life. It really has the feel of the first one, more than the second one or the girls’ one. It has a different feel than two out of four.”
Murray believed that Jason Reitman’s idea for the movie was really great. The movie was very hard to shoot so the Lost in Translation star’s faith in the movie became stronger. Wearing the Ecto-suit was physically painful for the actor.
