Die-hard fans of the original two Ghostbusters movies likely know that the plot of Dan Aykroyd's planned Ghostbusters 3 -- for a while, anyway -- was a version of Ghostbusters Go To Hell. The story would have sent Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson to an alternate, evil version of Manhattan, where they'd also meet the Devil. This script never came to pass, but it looks and sounds like Hell also was supposed to be featured in the first Ghostbusters, and this is what it would have looked like:
Bernie Wrightson is a concept artist and comic-book artist who specialized in horror and worked with countless legends on films such as Heavy Metal and Swamp Thing. In a new video (unearthed by io9), Wrightson reflects on his time spent designing creatures for Ghostbusters, contributing ideas for the Library Ghost and Gozer's Terror Dogs. When he gets to the Hell scenes, he admits that he was working from an early draft of the story, which would have shown off the Gates to Hell, and presumably would have followed the Ghostbusters down this Road to Hell, where they might have encountered even more demons.
Alas, it wasn't meant to be. The Ghostbusters stayed on a New York rooftop when they faced down Gozer, and the trip to Hell never happened. Bernie Wrightson says that Sony held on to all of the concept art that was submitted, probably so that they'd have the idea to use in future movies. And Dan Aykroyd really beat that drum for several years, believing that the idea of sending his Ghostbusters to Hell -- or a version of it, on our Earth -- could be comedic gold. As you know, we got a Ghostbusters reboot this summer, instead, and many of you wanted to send that version straight to Hell. We hear you.
Here's the full snippet of the video, which is part of a larger Kickstarter campaign for a portfolio Bernis Wrightson did for Stephen King's Cycle of the Werewolf. You can get more details, and make a contribution, here.
There are two more pieces of concept art that would have been part of the original Ghostbusters if director Ivan Reitman wanted to go down that rabbit hole. Read on to check them out, and see what almost might have been way back in 1984.
