Screenwriter brings the heat to the ‘Ghostbusters’ reboot

And that’s exactly what Paul Feig has done with Ghostbusters.

But the world’s most populous nation – and no. 2 film market – won’t be joining the fun anytime soon.

The Hollywood Reporter has learned from sources close to China Film Co., the state-owned agency that determines which foreign films are released within China, that Ghostbusters has been blocked from screening there.

While Feig says he could live with the concerns of fans of the original series who didn’t want to see the films tampered with, it was the concerted misogynistic campaign, the likes of which he had yet to encounter in his career, that proved problematic.

Speculation only increased this Spring, when it was revealed that the Chinese character for “ghost” had been removed from the reboot’s Chinese title, even though it appears in the local names for the original films.

What the director wasn’t prepared for however, was the vitriolic abuse he would go on to receive after announcing the Ghostbusters remake would be filmed with four women in the primary roles that were originally held by four men. The sequels followed suit.

This denial was, apparently, not unexpected, but for an entirely different reason: movies pertaining to the supernatural have been banned in the past by the Chinese government, as official censorship guidelines prohibit movies that “promote cults or superstition” to their audiences. The reboot, however, has been reworked as “超能敢死队”, meaning “Super Power Dare Die Team”. The 32-year-old movie, starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson and Sigourney Weaver, made $242.2 million in lifetime grosses domestically and more than $295 million worldwide. Wakanda, for example, will help Legendary Entertainment produce the sequel to Pacific Rim and other studios are looking into new potential blockbusters that border science-fiction in an attempt to get Chinese audiences out to the cinema more often.