Paul Feig explains why he’s doing a Play-Doh film; plus more on Ghostbusters

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Unless you've repressed it from your memory you're likely still scratching your head over yesterday's news that a Play-Doh film is in development with Paul Feig attached to direct. Believe it or not, but Paul Feig had the same reaction himself before coming around to the idea. Feig spoke to Yahoo Movies today and revealed his first impressions:

Honestly, when it was first brought to me and they asked ‘Can you make a movie out of this?’ I thought the same thing, like ‘What the f—- do you do with that?’, but if you think about it, it’s just claymation. All Play-Doh is is multi-colored clay. What greater playing thing?

I realized yesterday that I needed to keep an open-mind about this project; after all, I had similar thoughts about THE LEGO MOVIE in the beginning and that ended up being a very fun film. Paul Feig is hoping you'll extend a similar courtesy to his Play-Doh move and just wait to hear more.

The problem with the business in general is that stuff gets announced and nobody knows any context for what you’re going to do or what your idea is, and so all they have is the ability to just lose their minds, that happened on Ghostbusters. They come from a place of thinking you’re going to do the absolute worst version of whatever it is that they think you’re going to do…. A lot of times you want to go, ‘Just wait!’

The film was previously reported to be a live-action affair but Feig clarified that it would most likely be a mix of claymation and CGI, which makes much more sense to me than a live-action film.

Speaking of GHOSTBUSTERS, Feig also touched on why he's moving so far away from the original plot and characters:

That’s why I wanted to reboot Ghostbusters, because then I’m not tainting anything other than a general idea if you end up not loving it, versus, ‘oh look what he did with Dan Aykroyd and the Peter Venkman character, that seems like more of a peril than just taking a property and doing it again.

The second GHOSTBUSTERS project from Joe and Anthony Russo, the one which could star Channing Tatum and Chris Pratt, was thought to share the same universe as Paul Feig's film with the intention being that both casts would team up for a future film but according to Feig, that may not be the case:

Honestly, that has nothing to do with us at all, it was a surprise when it was announced, and it remains a surprise. All I’m doing is concentrating on mine.

Now it's possible that Sony is simply waiting to see how GHOSTBUSTERS does before announcing any plans for a larger universe, or perhaps we really will be getting two entirely separate films in the Ghostbusters universe.