Ghostbusters: Afterlife hits cinema screens this week, the latest instalment of the 1980s film franchise starring Bill Murray and Sigourney Weaver.
Last time we saw them as Peter Venkman and Dana Barrett, New York was being taken over by the second coming of a 16th-century tyrant who was powered by a river of slime running beneath the Big Apple’s streets.
For readers unfamiliar with the film who think that sounds a bit far-fetched, the original script for Ghostbusters II went even further – to Scotland, in fact.
In his first draft, writer Dan Ackroyd – who also plays Ray Stantz – had Barrett kidnapped by ghouls and transported across the Atlantic to an underground civilisation.
According to the November 1989 issue of magazine Cinefex, the Ghostbusters would then have had to travel for three days through a tube to rescue her from a “fairy ring”.
On reflection, Ackroyd deemed his own plan as “really too far out” and turned his imagination back to New York.
He told Cinefex: “It was probably too inaccessible, though I thought at the time I wrote it that it was the direction we should go in.
“I wanted to leave New York City behind because I thought we had done that… my original concept for going underground was different.
“It involved a pneumatic tube 2000 miles long that they travelled in for three days, it was like a primitive mail chute.”
Bill Murray makes brief appearance in final trailer
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