McCarthy, Feig, and Wiig all told us they feel a certain "pressure" pioneering an all-female riff on a beloved movie but were heartened by the early response from women and girls.
McCarthy said she was especially touched by seeing girls in Ghostbusters cosplay at Comic-Con. "That just makes my heart feel good," she beamed. "I love Ghostbusters. I grew up with it. I just showed my two girls for the first time like six, seven months ago, and they loved it. I think any kind of underdog that is fighting good v. evil, I don't think that has a gender to it. There was somebody here yesterday that made her own suit and backpack, it was awesome. Especially because I have two girls."
Feig chalked much of the scrutiny up to the nostalgia around the original films — though admitted he'd seen a certain gender-specific vitriol. "I feel like there's pressure just on doing a reboot of Ghostbusters anyway, just because it's such a beloved thing, and you don't want to screw it up, and you don't want to copy the old one, but you don't want to pretend it doesn't exist." He added: "There's a weird set of expectations that went out, especially among the — I don't want to say misogynistic — but less enlightened crowd, who really think I'm making it into a romantic comedy, where there's going to be, like, a sequences of trying on hats and dress shopping." (To be clear: there won't be.)
