Ghostbusters May Add Another Saturday Night Live Star

Director Paul Feig has already loaded up his all-female Ghostbusters cast with a good number of Saturday Night Live players. Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones are both on the current line-up for the long-running sketch series, and Kristen Wiig is one of the best known recent graduates from the show. However, it seems that Feig isn't done yet mining SNL for castmembers, as new rumors have surfaced suggesting he has his eyes on another one.

Film Divider has apparently gotten word from an unnamed insider claiming that Cecily Strong has been written into the Ghostbusters script for what has been described as a key female role. While the site seems to be purposefully short on details, they say that she will be playing one of the biggest non-Ghostbuster parts in the movie outside of the story's central antagonist. She is an "authority figure" who also serves as the Ghostbusters benefactor - but evidently this all plays out in secret. In public, the character actually denounces the spirit hunting team in order to prevent the public from panicking about the real-life presence of poltergeists.

Cecily Strong first joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 2012, but to this point in her career hasn't stacked up a ton of acting credits. She has done voice work for the animated series The Awesomes, and has a role in Sundance comedy The Bronze, which co-stars Melissa Rauch and Captain America: The Winter Soldier's Sebastian Stan (but doesn't yet have a release date). She has a few recurring characters on SNL, and in the clip below you can see her as one of the co-hosts of the "Porn Stars" sketch:

It's interesting that a direct line can't really be connected between the character Cecily Strong is rumored to be playing and the original film, but I wonder if that may not be a very good thing. If Paul Feig's Ghostbusters isn't going to do the smart thing and play within the established continuity of the franchise, at the very least it can set itself apart by actually being its own thing.

After years of being stuck in development hell, it's strange that a new Ghostbusters movie is actually right around the corner, and this is just one of many, many stories you can expect to hear about the project in the coming months. Production will be starting up soon, and Sony Pictures has dated the film for release on July 22, 2016.

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