Channing Tatum's Ghostbusters Spinoff Won't Be Happening, Get The Details

It appeared for some time that Paul Feig’s upcoming adaptation of Ghostbusters showcasing an all-female main cast was going to be spun-off into an all-male project starring Channing Tatum. However, recent comments from Tatum’s producing partner indicate that recent developments may have just cancelled plans to pick up his proton pack.

In an interview with Screen Rant, writer/producer, Reid Carolin dished on the status of the prospective Y-chromosome-injected Ghostbusters spinoff. A consistent collaborator with Tatum, having written and produced both Magic Mike movies and serving as a producer on Tatum’s upcoming X-Men entry, Gambit, Carolin certainly brandishes credibility when revealing that the men’s Ghostbusters project is pretty much stuck in slime. According to Carolin on its chances:

No I don’t think so, I think it’s too complicated. There’s a lot of things going on with that brand and I just feel like it’s over-saturated.

The news seems to indicate a rather abrupt end to an ambitious attempt to broadly revive the Ghostbusters tent-pole. Yet, the writing seemed to be on the wall with apparent signs of non-committal from both Tatum and the film’s potential co-headliner, Chris Pratt. An additionally detrimental sign saw the courted talents of Joe and Anthony Russo as producers and prospective directors slip through the film’s fingers. The siblings, who impressed in their efforts helming last year’s Captain America: The Winter Solider would eventually lock themselves down to direct the 2018-2019 Marvel mega-movie-event, Avengers: Infinity War – Parts I & II; pretty much leaving the all-male Ghostbusters holding their proverbial neutrino wands.

The initial news back in March announcing the all-male spinoff seemed to be a rather perplexing proposal that might have been a knee-jerk studio decision to mitigate the flood of social media madness from perturbed purists about Feig’s female-led film. Yet, the abrupt expansion was also perceived as a cynical surrender to those negative forces that seemingly sabotaged the buildup to the all-female movie with the apparent promise that "the real" Ghostbusters reboot would be coming soon enough. Additionally, new cycle rumblings pointed to plans for a Marvel-like shared continuity, revealing the commitment-heavy amorphous enormity of Sony Pictures’ tent-pole ambitions. Yet, in doing so, they may repelled some desirable big name stars like Emma Stone from the entire franchise as a whole.

In this sense, Carolin’s seemingly premature qualification of the new Ghostbusters franchise being "oversaturated" starts to make sense. Channing Tatum’s plate is more than full right now when it comes to franchises with next week’s sequel, Magic Mike XXL possibly yielding more movies, next year’s 23 Jump Street and his first foray into comic book movies in the aforementioned X-Men spinoff, Gambit. From a career standpoint, he not only didn’t need Ghostbusters, but the project may have been perilous for his career. Besides, Tatum's recent comments on his role in the G.I. Joe movie franchise may have revealed that he's more discriminatory in his choices.

Thus, it appears that Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters will likely avoid crossing any streams with the men when it arrives at theaters on July 22, 2016.