There’s been almost no real movement on the eagerly anticipated, long-gestating Ghostbusters 3 for months. Because of that there’s been no reason to believe the movie, despite the best intentions of people like Ivan Reitman and Dan Akyroyd, will ever happen at all let alone any time soon. Except now, out of nowhere, not only does the oft reliable Production Weekly believe it’s happening, they believe Sony has actually set a start date for filming.

They say they’ve been hearing that Sony Pictures plans to put an Ivan Reitman directed Ghostbusters 3 into production in May of 2011. If true, that could mean you’ll see a Ghostbusters 3 in theaters during the summer of 2012.

Yet even Production Weekly seems a little uncertain on this rumor and if you’ve been following the somewhat tortured production process of Ghostbusters 3 at all, you know there are a lot of road blocks they’ll need to clear out of the way before they can begin filming in earnest. The biggest road block is Bill Murray who, up till now, has shown no sign of actually being interested in doing this movie. He’s demanded they kill him off, trashed the script, loudly proclaimed that he doesn’t think it’ll ever happen, and generally sounded like he simply doesn’t want it to. And without Venkman, there is no Ghostbusters sequel.

A few weeks ago, though, he did show up at the Scream Awards in full Ghostbusters regalia. Was that a sign that he’s had a change of heart and it’s full speed ahead on Ghostbusters 3? We’ll have more on this as it develops.