Sony Hack: Channing Tatum’s ‘Ghostbusters’ Pitch and 4 Other Revelations

Does Channing Tatum want to be the person you call if there’s something strange in your neighborhood? 

As more leaked emails hit the web following the Nov. 24 cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment’s systems, the actor’s pitch for a new Ghostbusters movie in which he would star has come to light.

Here are five of the most notable revelations to have recently surfaced from the leaked emails, published by Defamer (here and here), The Daily Beast and Vulture. 

1. Channing Tatum wants himself and Chris Pratt to strap on proton packs.

In August, Tatum sent the following email to Sony co-chairman Amy Pascal, seemingly to express his interest in starring in a new Ghostbusters film: “Let us show the world The DarkSide and let us fight it with all the glory and epicness of a HUGE BATMAN BEGINS MOVIE. I know we can make this a huge franchise. Fun adventure craziness. COME OONNNN!!!”

An email sent the following day by Columbia Pictures co-president of production Hannah Minghella shed more light on the possible project, which brothers Anthony and Joe Russo (who directed Captain America: The Winter Soldier) would develop and produce for Tatum and Pratt to star in. “In a curious turn of events, the Russos and Channing want to develop Ghostbusters as a vehicle for Channing and Chris Pratt to do together,” Minghella wrote. “The Russos, Channing and [Tatum’s producing partner] Reid [Carolin] have been brainstorming ideas and want to create a whole new mythology that would support multiple movies (the way that [Christopher] Nolan reinvented Batman).”

Minghella, who wrote that the film would be “simultaneously super scary while also super funny,” pointed out that the Russo brothers are close with Paul Feig, who is helming a female-centric Ghostbusters reboot. According to Minghella, the Russos would like Feig to direct the Tatum-Pratt film, as well as the all-female one.

Minghella wrote that she thinks both films could exist together, and her fellow Sony execs appear to agree. They all wrote back with enthusiastic replies, including Pascal, who summed up her sentiment with one simple word: “f—.”

See more Channing Tatum: Exclusive Portraits of the ‘Foxcatcher’ Star

2. Prepare to jump out of your seat during Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters film.

An email from Feig revealed that he plans to make his film “scarier and more hi-tech” than the 1984 original. He wants Peter Dinklage to play the film’s main villain, a convicted murderer who returns as a ghost when his execution is disrupted by “a supercharged electrical storm.” 

3. Feig wants a certain Saturday Night Live actress in it, too. 

Feig’s email stated that the film will center on four female Ghostbusters who work for the government, although the government claims not to be affiliated with them in order to deny the official existence of ghosts. The women “figure out in funny, scary and action-packed ways how to save New York City and the world.”

Feig also hopes to have SNL‘s Cecily Strong as a bureaucratic antagonist who is “always saying terrible things about them in press conferences and then apologizing to them behind the scenes.”

Read more Can Sony Get Around the First Amendment to Sue the Media Over the Hack?

4. Pascal had some harsh words for Cameron Crowe’s forthcoming Bradley Cooper rom-com. 

Following the still-untitled film’s November test screenings in New York City and Huntington Beach, Calif., Pascal fired off an email in which she had this to say about the film: “I’m never starting a movie again when the script is ridiculous.” She added, “I don’t care how much I love the director and the actors. It never, not even once, ever works.”

She wrote that the test scores for the film, which also stars Emma Stone and Rachel McAdams, are “same as last time” and “way way worse in New York.” She criticized Crowe for not changing anything since the film was screened previously. She also wrote, “People don’t like people in movies who flirt with married people or married people who flirt.”

5. Not all Sony execs think The Interview is very good. 

In an email to another Sony exec, U.K. Sony Pictures’ Peter Taylor criticized the forthcoming Seth Rogen–James Franco comedy as a “misfire,” calling it “unfunny and repetitive.” Taylor also wrote that Franco “proves once again that irritation is his strong suit, which is a shame because the character could have been appealing and funny out of his hands.”

Email: Ryan.Gajewski@pgmedia.org
Twitter: @_RyanGajewski