Ghostbusters Would Have Caused $23 Million In Damages (Adjusted For Inflation)
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Are you troubled by strange noises in the middle of the night? Do you experience feelings of dread in your basement or attic? Have you or your family ever seen a spook, specter, or ghost? Who, pray tell, are you gonna call? The answer seems obvious, but before you go dialing the Ghostbusters, you might want to make sure your insurance is paid up to date. Venkman, Spengler, Stantz, and Zeddemore may get the job done, but there’s a good chance they’re going to burn down your house in the process.
So how much damage should you expect the Ghostbusters to tally up in the process of exorcising your home or workplace? The folks over at CinemaSins — best known for their “Everything Wrong With [Insert Movie Title Here]” videos — have watched through Ghostbusters and estimated the dollar value of all the damage caused during the film. They did a really good job, too, taking account of not just the obvious stuff like proton-pack scorch marks, building damage, and the cost of cleaning up all that marshmallow fluff, but also things like the cost of refiling all those catalog cards from the library sequence, or reupholstering Dana’s couch after all the demonic arms rip out of it. Okay, so some of them are a bit of a stretch (“Peck’s dick operation”), but they’re funny stretches, so we’re going to allow it.
The grand total? $10,511,175. Adjusted for inflation since Ghostbusters’ 1984 release, that works out to around $23,578,689. Ouch. I mean, it’s not Man of Steel levels of destruction, but I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be the one getting that bill. Maybe it’s time to consider franchising their brand after all.
Of course, all this Ghostbusters talk naturally makes us wonder if we’ll ever get that third film Dan Aykroyd has been promising for ages now. The latest word is that Sony wants Jonah Hill and Emma Stone for the project, and that it might begin filming this spring. Personally, I think it’s more likely Gozer will knock on my front door and ask me if I’ve heard the good news about Scientology. But you can always do what I do and consider Ghostbusters: The Video Game to be Ghostbusters 3 — it’s considered canon, and includes all four main Ghostbusters actors reprising their roles. Hell, even if you’re not a gamer, you can watch it in “movie form” below, thanks to a bit of editing by YouTuber BrySkye.
