Paul Feig blames the 2016 US presidential election for the ‘Ghostbusters’ flop.
The 57-year-old director believes that the backlash against presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the US directly led to the failure of the female ‘Ghostbusters’ reboot, starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones.
Speaking to SiriusXM, he said: "I think some really brilliant author…needs to write a book about 2016 and how intertwined we were with Hillary [Clinton] and the anti-Hillary movement. Everyone was at a boiling point. I don’t know if it was having an African American president for eight years that they were teed up, they were just ready to explode.
"It’s crazy how people got nuts about women trying to be empowered or be in positions they weren’t normally in, and it was an ugly, ugly year."
Meanwhile, although the movie was met with an online backlash and bombed at the box office, Paul recently insisted he would make another film "if anybody ever wanted it".
He said: "I would actually make another Ghostbusters if anybody ever wanted it. I was like a kid in a candy store.
"What is weird is when you come into something that brings a set of rules that are unbreakable because, as a storyteller, you’re like ‘Why can’t I break that? Can’t I have fun with that?’"
Another ‘Ghostbusters’ reboot, ‘Ghostbusters 2020’ is to be released next year, and will be directed by Jason Reitman.
The movie replaces the original cast with a group of children, and while there has been less backlash than with Paul’s movie, the filmmaker believes the reception to the film will determine whether his adaptation was a "mistake".
He said: "We’ll find out when Jason’s movie comes out. If that goes through the roof, I’ll go: ‘Sure, I guess I made a mistake doing a reboot.’"