Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters 1 and 2) is officially on to direct Ghostbusters 3. Bloody Disgusting confirmed his involvement along with this little juicy script detail.

Apparently, the sequel takes place when the paranormal researchers "reopen" their ghost removal service after it has been closed for quite a few years.

Please, let their first client be the Mayor's idiot son or the angry doctor's child, because nothing would give me more pleasure than to hear Bill Murray, who is confirmed to have some sort of involvement, deliver this gem again....

Again, this is a big spoiler, so avert your eyes if you want to your Zombieland experience to be spoiler free.

The giant cameo that people saw inside Zombieland this weekend was none other than Bill Murray himself, pretending to be a zombie, so he could remain safe inside his Hollywood mansion. I almost died from laughter when they all reenacted Ghostbusters, but the kicker was watching the skinny Jesse Eisenberg fire off a few rounds into his chest, mistaking him for an actual zombie. Now we all know the Murray is a legendary comic and improviser so we all know there had to be more to his death scene that what was screened. So we asked the Murray murderer himself....

Were you disappointed you didn't get to get high and reenact Ghostbusters with Bill Murray?

Jesse Eisenberg: We did, right after.

That was, without a doubt, the best thing I've ever seen.

JE: It was awesome. No, I was ... the whole joke of the setup was that my character is scared, and I would not know when he tries to scare me, so I would kill him. So I was so thrilled to be in that position.

You mean you were thrilled to be the one who gets to kill Bill Murray?

Yeah. I mean, it's my favorite part of the movie. You've just got used to this guy, and you think it's so cool that he's in the movie, and then he gets murdered like five minutes into it.

What was it like watching him die?

I was just in his death scene, and he was hysterical. He improvised the funniest things you'll ever hear.

I can only imagine that with him there's like seven different deaths scenes that we didn't get to see.

More than that, yeah. My favorite was not in the movie. She (Abigail Breslin) says to him, "Do you have any regrets?" And he says, "Only that I tried to scare this guy." ... And then Woody says, "Is there anything I can do?" He goes, "You can kill him for me." And Woody says OK.
Then he says, "And the little girl."

But that's not the only death scene available, if you stay until the end of the credits Murray surfaces again, to drop a Carl Spackler Caddyshack reference....

That's Murray saying, "In the words of the immortal philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre... au revoir, gopher."

But you may have read that it wasn't always going to be Bill Murray in Zombieland? In our exclusive interview writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, they filled us in on the many big celebrities they had in mind for the zombie cameo. Thankfully, Bill won out. But we wouldn't have minded a Kevin Bacon Footloose dancing zombie or two.

Was it always supposed to be Bill Murray?

Paul Wernick: In our DREAMS, we had Bill Murray. Interestingly, you have a list of the people you would absolutely love to have play the role and people who are just un-gettable. And Bill Murray is pretty much at the top of that list. He doesn't have a manager, he doesn't have an agent, he has an 800 number you call and leave a voicemail and he either gets back to you or not. He's notorious for being impossible to land and even if you land him, when he says yes, the chances of him showing up is ... you get lucky once he's on set.

So he was a dream, and we had gone through about 15 drafts with 15 different actors. It started with Patrick Swayze — this was before he got sick obviously — and then went Sylvester Stallone, The Rock, Matthew McConnaughy, Jean Claude Van Damme, Joe Pesci, Mark Hamill Kevin Bacon.

Rhett Reese: All those people, for one reason or another, would not or could not do it. And we were down to the eleventh hour, and we had written a version with no celebrity, just a zombie-fighting version where they fought more zombies, and we were prepared to shoot it but Paul just wouldn't take no for an answer and pestered Woody and said, "Well, is there any one else you can think of to be in this thing?" And Woody had two names: Dustin Hoffman and Bill Murray.

And Paul said, "Yes to Dustin Hoffman and yes to Bill Murray!" Dustin couldn't do it and I don't even think that got ... But Bill said, "Well, send me the script." So we found the script, and he loved it, and he ended up being in the movie. It was a true Christmas miracle in April.

I hear that originally Bill was a zombie in it, that he was dead, so he decided to change it?

Rhett Reese: Correct. Well Bill wanted more to do. Because a zombie can only do so much; they can't talk, they have to snarl an attack and do all these things. We had some really fun celebrity zombie moments, I mean we had Patrick Swayze running up and attacking Tallahassee and Tallahassee lifting him into the air, like Patrick Swayze did to Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing. He did the perfect lift and smashed him into a pillar and killed him that way. So we had been specifying the zombie attacks to the actor.

But Bill wanted more to do. And so the solution to that was why make him a zombie at all? Why not have him be alive, and then, oh my god, how about killing him? That all came out of the fact that he wanted more to do, so it was a blessing.

When Bill said "I want more to do," we thought "Well, let's go ahead and take a risk and put stuff in front of him that he may or may not do. Let's do Caddyshack jokes, let's do Ghostbusters jokes, and see if he reacts." We feared that he would not wanna make fun of his career or that he wouldn't want to do anything self-referential. Instead, he totally embraced it. We're calling Sony, going, "Get us the Ghostbusters outfit down here immediately! And see if we can get the rights to 'I'm Alright' by Kenny Loggins from Caddyshack!" So that all got put into motion in a hurry based on his willingness to do these crazy things.

Paul Wernick: It's so very rare that an actor is willing to make fun of himself and I think it endears, that ability to laugh at yourself, endears and audience to you. And I think it just really, really worked and we couldn't be happier and more proud that Bill Murray was in our movie. It was the most exciting thing in the world.

Reitman, who helmed the first two movies 25 and 20 years ago, tells MTV News he may direct the third one as well. Dan Aykroyd has already been hinting around at a premise, which would see the original team (or at least Aykroyd, Bill Murray, and Harold Ramis) joined by a younger generation of recruits, including a woman or two. A script is already in the works, by The Office's Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, and should be completed within a month.

We loved the first Ghostbusters (out on Blu-Ray next week in time for its 25th anniversary, y'all!), the second not so much, and Reitman's recent directing efforts are pretty hacktacular (Evolution may have a few closet supporters, but is there anyone out there who'll defend My Super Ex-Girlfriend? Anyone?) So we're dreading Ghostbusters III, especially if it falls into Reitman's hands again. At least one hint of good news may keep our well of hostility-loving pink goo from boiling over: Reitman may just be too darn busy to direct, forcing him to hand his nuclear backpack over to Ramis (Groundhog Day), who is Aykroyd's first choice anyway. Cross your fingers — but remember, don't cross the streams.

UPDATE: Ramis just gave an interview to ComingSoon, in which he says he doubts that Reitman wants to direct. (Though he'll undoubtedly nab a producing credit.) Ramis adds that he himself may not want to direct, but that all four of the OGs (original Ghostbusters), including Ernie Hudson, are on board, and that everyone's just waiting for the script. Also, he confirms that the story idea, on which he collaborated with Stupnitsky and Eisenberg (who also wrote Ramis' soon-to-be-released prehistoric spoof Year One), will involve a younger team of ghoul grabbers. "It's not about us running around," he says. "We'll be introducing new people."

LA Times' The Hero Complex interviewed Dan Aykroyd who first explained that he harbored no ill will towards Bill Murray for not immediately signing on for the third film, and that it was indeed Murray's involvement that became the "pivot point in making a third film happen."

Aykroyd revealed that the new busters would be a a five-member "new generation" team with more than one female member:

"I'd like it to be a passing-of-the-torch movie. Let's revisit the old characters briefly and happily and have them there as family, but let's pass it on to a new generation."

As for what women Aykroyd thinks should fill out those jumpsuits? That part was easy to answer: Alyssa Milano and Eliza Dushku. Who wouldn't want to be surrounded up those two great looking, butt-kicking gals all day on set? Plus Milano did the voices for the Ghostbusters video game.

Of course this is only speculation, and both actresses twittered that they hadn't heard anything:

Alyssa Milano:

Can't speak for @ElizaPatricia (Hi, pretty lady)but this is the first I'm hearing of Ghostbusters 3. Did the VO in the game tho.

Eliza Dushku:

Ghost-rumor-buster in a big way @Alyssa_milano (hey girlene) it's nuthin' I know of.

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In City Of Ember, based on a bestselling series of young-adult novels by Jeanne DuPrau, it's the distant future. Some kind of unspecified (in the movie) calamity has rendered the surface of the Earth uninhabitable. The last survivors of the human race huddle in an underground city, but they're running out of supplies and the city's generator is failing. Soon enough, the city won't support life any more. It turns out the people were supposed to leave the city long ago, but the city's incompetent leadership lost the instructions. So it's up to two plucky kids to discover the way out of Ember.

In some ways, it's quite similar to Wall-E: humans have abandoned the surface of the Earth for an artificial environment, because we trashed Earth. And now it's time for humans to return to the Earth's surface, but those in charge want to preserve the status quo. So it's up to two kids/robots to lead the way. The only difference between Wall-E and Ember is that in Ember, the humans are starving to death instead of living in luxury.

Thinking about Ember, I was reminded of something Steven Moffat, the new showrunner of BBC children's show Doctor Who, told me when I interviewed him in July:

The misconception about children's fiction is that it's lightweight or fluffy. It's about really big and important things. It's adults who like light and fluffy. Everything is big and important to a child, [so] their stories are about big and important events.

You don't have to dig terribly deep in Ember to find a wealth of political allegory. It's all right there on the surface, like it was in Wall-E. The thing that's great about Ember is that its story of post-apocalyptic survivalism feels like a tangible thing. You practically smell the fug of the city's generators and the rot of its ancient timbers. You can feel the dirt and tar under your fingernails. That makes the story of a city that's running out of resources much more compelling and hard to forget. Director Gil Kenan said in an interview recently that he wants you to walk out of Ember and feel surprised and relieved that there's a sky overhead. Which is exactly the feeling I had.

Kenan and production designer Martin Laing built the entire city, more or less, in the hangar where the actual Titanic was built. And this fiendish over-building pays off, because Ember feels like a real place. It's a cliche to say that a place becomes like a character in a story, but it's kind of true this time around.

Another reason why Ember might have a bit more oomph than Indiana Jones 4 or Incredible Hulk: Bill Murray has the time of his life playing the corrupt mayor, who sees his job as making people okay with a doomed status quo. At some level, the mayor knows everybody is fucked, but he has no answers. So his version of leadership is to administer slow euthenasia to his citizens, keeping them optimistic long enough to cushion the blow of their inevitable extinction. He promises to assemble a blue-ribbon commission to investigate the city's power outages, and meanwhile stockpiles supplies in a hidden bunker for when things go all the way south.Which brings me to another way Ember ruled: it showed how nice and cozy political propaganda can be. People always talk about hope being a brave thing — the phrase "the audacity of hope" is a bit shopworn at this point — but actually, hope is the coward's way out. When the sky really is falling, hoping for the best is just a coping mechanism. The people in Ember have a sort of vague theology about the Builders, who created the city and will come back to save everyone. The townsfolk also believe that there's nothing but darkness outside the city, and the surface of the Earth — and the sun — don't really exist. Propaganda and religious dogma blend together into a warm slurry.

I haven't even talked about Saoirse Ronan yet. The good news is, she's pretty great in a role that could easily have been annoying or worse. She's a much better detective this time around than she was in Atonement. She and costar Harry Treadaway compile a series of clues that mostly fall into their laps, but they also make a few clever deductions and put the pieces together. I love detective stories, including kid-detective stories, and any movie that blends genres is automatically on the right track as far as I'm concerned. A post-apocalyptic Nancy Drew story? Sign me up!

The thing that's moderately clever about the kid-detective plot is that a small act of rebellion touches the whole thing off. Both Lina (Ronan) and Doon (Treadaway) receive assigned jobs from the state in the Day Of Assignment. Murray's mayor pulls job assignments out of a bag in front of a mostly empty auditorium, and gives each kid the job that he or she will have for the rest of his/her life. There's no social mobility, no aspiration, just the job you're assigned. Lina and Doon both receive the absolute worst jobs for them: she's assigned to the city's pipeworks, and he's made a messenger. Even though these assignments were announced in front of everyone, they agree to swap. And it's thanks to that trade that both kids start noticing the clues that lead to a way out of the city.

Right after I watched Ember, I got into a debate with another critic, who was there to review it for a film site. She felt like the film was religious propaganda, because the kids find the way out of the city by having faith and persevering in the face of obstacles. They become the saviors of Ember and lead everyone out of the darkness into the light. I felt like the movie was actually saying the opposite: the two kids save the city precisely because they don't have blind faith. Instead of taking the received wisdom and believing the city's leadership, they observe the world around them and look at actual evidence. Their emergence into the light is a triumph of reason over superstition.

I don't have a definite answer as to which of us was right. But the fact that two adults could have a spirited argument about the political meaning of this film — just the way conservatives and liberals have both claimed Wall-E as a conservative or liberal parable — seems like a good sign to me.

Oh, and I almost forgot. The major addition to the film that wasn't in the novel appears to be a giant tentacle-faced mole that stalks our heroes through the tunnels. It didn't bother me, and it was kind of a crazy surprise in the middle of an otherwise semi-realistic story. But you can see it for yourself here, and decide if you think it mars an otherwise great film.

In the end of Ember the corrupt Mayor met a grisly demise by way of giant tentacle-faced mole. But Murray insists this is not the last you'll see of him, based on science. But both Tim Robbins' and Saoirse Ronan's characters are in the novel sequel, so you'll probably see their dirt streaked cheeks again.

Do you think it may be possible to bring your characters back for other films, I know Bill you're eaten by a mole....

Bill Murray: I may have been injured by the mole. I see myself in a sling in the sequel.

Tim Robbins: I think when you are eaten by a mole, that it doesn't really digest you.

Bill Murray: You become regurgitated.

Robbins: So yeah, that's the scientific explanation.

Murray: They are aerobic, they're not anaerobic, so you are even able to breathe within the digestive tract, and procreate.

Robbins: Apparently, both characters are in the next book.

Saoirse Ronan: I haven't read the second book, but I don't think you're in it [to Murray].

Murray: [Laughs] My people.

Ronan: I asked Gil [Kenan the director] when we were on set whether we were going to do a sequel or not and he said, "Get all of your friends to go and see it and then we'll see." I think it's basically how this one goes and then we'll see.

But you would do it?

Ronan: Yeah, if Gil was still going to do it and we still had all of the cast, then yes.

How much research did you do for the movie?

Tim Robbins: I dug a hole, and I went inside of it. A very deep hole. A very deep hole. And then I covered myself. And, yeah, I had a little light. And then I waited till the light was extinguished, and then I had it all right there. [Laughs] Sorry, I went for the humor.

Saoirse Ronan: I don't know. It's kind of one of those characters; I don't think you can really research somebody who is buried underground, who lives underground. And, obviously, nobody here would have experienced that. So I think it was one of those characters where you just have to do it in the moment. And as long as I had [The Director] Gil [Kenan] there, I was fine, you know? And he was, like, my research guide, if that makes sense.

Bill Murray: I did a little research. I found that the book was a book that kids in America read in school now. They read it in middle school. And when I told my sons I was going to be in The City of Ember, they said, "Oh! You're going to be the Mayor?" And I hadn't even read the script or the movie yet. And I thought, "They already know what's being spoken about, and I don't." So when I read it, I read it from their point of view.

I tried to think of what they made of what this guy was, what this mayor was [in] the book and the script. And I think to the degree that a mayor can be a father figure who can disappoint you. I'm a father figure, and I've probably disappointed on occasion. I thought, when you're most disappointed is when you talk the talk and you don't live up to it. And that's pretty much what this guy did. So I felt as long as I was really, really successful in talking the talk, that the disappointment would be there, just like a gasp.

The mayor seems to be eating every other time we see him. And primarily we saw him slurping on a lot of (really big) sardines from cans. Did you have to suck down all that food? Did you enjoy it?

Murray: I'm not really a sardine guy. I do like caviar. I do. And I like eggplant. And I can eat copious amounts of caviar and a fair amount of eggplant. This was the most sardines I've ever eaten in my entire life. And I associate sardines with being these little things. These were [makes a face stretches out his hand] serious sardines, this big.

Ronan: They were!

Murray: These were.

Robbins: You don't get a stunt eater?

Murray: I got no stunt pay whatsoever. It was a lot. It was a lot of sardines, more than I've ever had. It got kind of funny.

Did you perceive a correlation or metaphor in the film to our current situation now?

Murray: Tim could you take this one?

Robbins: No I already took that one [Laughs].

Murray: Well you certainly feel it. It came up today: is this movie like what we are living through now? Is it intentionally written to be like what we're going through now? To be fair, you don't want to accuse a writer to be intentionally mirror-like or being metaphorical about your current situation.

But I think what it is, is the same combination of problems happened in that world, that happened in our world. Whatever your intention is, you're still going to encounter a lot of the same difficulties. So whether you say it's a movie about preserving our environmental resources — well no, not necessarily.

I think it's about a person who finds a way to survive in spite of all that's around them. They find their personal will and kind follow their will and their spirit to emerge from a difficult situation. And on on the way to that, you encounter this ecological consideration that we have: "How am I going to live my life? Am I going to live my life like this? Is behaving as an eco-creature going to help me serve my spirit? I think it was inevitably coincidental, but I don't think it was intentional. When you go on this search, seeking your own personal answers, you're going to encounter those things.

Talking about how much fun it was to play the bad guy in Ember (and how surprisingly easy it was to be evil) Murray joked with reporters that he would only come back to Ghostbusters 3 on one condition:

Only if I can play an evil person. No, it's all about the script. It's not like I have an obligation to the franchise or anyone. If the script were good and I thought we were going to do it. No one's ever talked about doing the third one because the second one was the way that it was.

When I poked and prodded more to see what kind of man Murray thinks Venkman is now (is he divorced, does he have kids, what about the show?) he replied sweetly and ever so roundaboutly.

I am Venkman, so here I am. As far as the movie goes. Let's see what these fellows come up with. I don't want to program them, I'm sure I couldn't. Let's get a new take on it. In the sequel there was Venkman and he was sort of not really the father of the kid of his old girlfriend. Like "who invented that one," that's not the way I think. That serves the special effects writers.

But as we all now know the taste of slime from Ghostbusters 2 left a stank taste in Murray's mouth. But he's singing the praises of the The Office scribes that are taking on this flick.

I think it's a great idea that they hired these two guys to do it. Because I think it could be a fresh look at it and it could be funny. When we did the sequel it was rather unsatisfying for me, because the first one to me was the goods. It was the real thing. The sequel, it was a few years later [and] there was an idea pitched. They got us all together in a room and we all just laughed for a couple of hours and thought up a few ideas. So we had this idea. But it didn't turn out to be that idea, when I arrived on set. It was a whole different movie. And the special effects guys got their hands on it. It was just not the same movie. There were a few great scenes in it but it was never the same movie. So there was never any interest in a third Ghostbusters because the second one was so disappointing for me at heart. The third one could happen.

Oh to be a fly on the wall in that room when all the original Ghostbusters were pitching ideas for the sequel.

But until then you'll have to get your Murray fill from the underground steampunky village of The City of Ember in theaters on Friday October 10th.

Ain't It Cool is reporting that Murray was asked about whether or not he'd be interested in appearing in Ghostbusters 3 during a press conference for City of Ember on the last day of Fantastic Fest:

[T]onight he said that he knew "some writers from The Office" were taking a stab at the script right now (which we already knew) and that he thinks that's a good start. He paused for a few seconds then said that he thinks enough time has passed and that "the wounds from Ghostbusters 2 are healed" and that he would definitely be into doing another Ghostbusters movie, stating that the first 40 minutes of the original film is some of the best stuff he's been associated with and the whole shoot was an amazing amount of fun.

He also went on to say that his enthusiasm for Ghostbusters was heightened after recording the voice of Peter Venkman for the video game over the summer. In fact, he said he found himself walking down the street singing the Ghostbusters theme song and then thought people walking around him were going to start yelling at him to "get over yourself, Bill," so he stopped... But the enthusiasm was there.

This is very exciting news - Not least of all because the idea of a Ghostbusters without Bill Murray is depressing to the point of pointlessness. But if Murray is willing to sign up one more time, we're ready to get in line for tickets right this minute... as long as Dan Ackroyd's dream of Seth Rogen involvement stays in his nighttime subconscious.

Bill Murray commented on Ghostbusters 3 tonight at Fantastic Fest! [Ain't It Cool]

The Mayor is for Hope, Change, Progress, Prosperity, Reform and Peace. I'm all on board with that platform — minus the change, because I fear that. In all honesty, I'd love to see Murray the Mayor get his own little debate against other fictional scifi leaders, like the Emperor or John Connor.

The Mayor celebrated his campaign at an subterranean dance party with his underground minions at the AICN Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX. The party took place in Longhorn Caverns. Figures, the one time I skip an underground dance party Murray shows up.

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City of Ember: So Far So Good from City of Ember on Vimeo.

[Sci Fi Wire]

According to the tween novel, when 'The Builders' built the city of Ember they knew that the generator would eventually start to run out. So they left a mechanical box with instructions that would open 220 years later when it was safe to leave the city again. Of course the box is forgotten about and found in the year 241 by a couple of kids. The present Ember is a troubled city with constant blackouts. It's up to the children to find a way out and to the surface. We only hope Saoirse Ronan is a better sleuth in this movie than she was in Atonement.

A.I. wasn't the only movie Kubrick failed to complete in the 1990s. He was also working on a movie version of A Shadow On The Sun, a cheesy 1960s BBC radio drama about a meteorite that brings a deadly virus to Earth. He got copies of the scripts and annotated them for hours, adding notes like: "DOG FINDS METEORITE" and "THE DOG IS NOT WELL" as he sketched the movie in his head.

The meteorite's virus gives people an unstoppable sexual appetite, leading to Eyes Wide Shut-esque scenes of depravity. In the radio version, it ends with this speech:

There's been so much killing - friend against friend, neighbour against neighbour, but we all know nobody on this earth is to blame, Mrs Brighton. We've all had the compulsions. We'll just have to forgive each other our trespasses. I'll do my part. I'll grant a general amnesty - wipe the slate clean. Then perhaps we can begin to live again, as ordinary decent human beings, and forget the horror of the past few months.

Teen (and tween) novels set after a global disaster range from the totally demented to the gritty and semi-realistic:

• The Hungry City Chronicles by Philip Reeve (also known as the Mortal Engines quartet.) A conflict known as the "Sixty Minute War" has reduced the world to wasteland, except for cities mounted on giant caterpillar treads. The cities roll around devouring each other with huge jaws.
• Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer. A meteor smacks into the moon, knocking it closer to Earth. Tsunamis, earthquakes and sun-blotting volcanic ash make the world almost uninhabitable.
• Children of the Dust by Louise Lawrence. After a nuclear war, the few survivors try to rebuild, but find that some of their kids are turning into mutants with weird white eyes and psychic abilities.
• Taronga by Victor Kelleher. A catastrophe destroys the Northern hemisphere, and Australia falls into total anarchy. A kid who can telepathically communicate with animals joins a gang of children hiding out in Sydney's Taronga zoo.
• A Hole In The Sky by Pete Hautman. A flu epidemic wipes out most of the world's population, and most adults who survive join scary cults. Including one cult that believes it has a duty to infect as many people as possible with the deadly flu strain.
• The Fire-us trilogy, by Jennifer Armstrong and Nancy Butcher. Another plague, but this one wipes out all adults, and then most kids die of disease or starvation. Seven kids miraculously live on in a Florida house and forge their own society.
• The Girl Who Owned A City by O.T. Nelson. Another plague wipes out everyone over 12, and vicious gangs roam around killing everybody. But a 10-year-old girl named Lisa comes up with a plan to create a safe place for her friends.
• The Last Book In The Universe by Rodman Philbrick. A giant earthquake known as "The Big Shake" has left most of the world uninhabitable, but a few genetically enhanced people can go live in the paradise known as Eden.
• Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O'Brien. A small American town is one of the few places to survive a nuclear war, and the 16-year-old Ann Burden keeps a diary of her life after the end.

The latest issue of Game Informer has the scoop:

Harold Ramis, Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd are getting back together and revisiting their roles to make a sequel to Ghostbusters 1 and 2 - in video-game form, and we've got the first details. Both Aykroyd and Ramis are teaming up for scriptwriting duties and are going far beyond just the typical licensed add-your-voice-to-the-game-you-had-nothing-to-do-with formula.