Ghostbusters: Kristen Wiig to lead all-female movie reboot

The director of the forthcoming Ghostbusters reboot announced the film's four leads on Twitter yesterday, confirming speculation that the cast would be entirely female.

The reboot of the much-loved 1984 film will star former stand-up Melissa McCarthy who will be reunited with fellow Bridesmaids star Kristen Wiig. The cast will also include Saturday Night Live comedians Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon.

Paul Feig, the film's director confirmed the casting in a tweet yesterday which featured a composite of the four actresses who will be taking over from Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson, who starred in the original film.

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The new film has had a difficult road to production. According to Hollywood Reporter, a previous reboot had been planned featuring the original characters 30 years on, but the project stalled when Bill Murray refused to sign on and was scuppered completely following the death of Harold Ramis in February last year.

After the film was turned over to Feig, it was reconceived with an all-female cast.

"I love the first one so much I don't want to do anything to ruin the memory of that. So it just felt like, let's just restart it because then we can have new dynamics. I want the technology to be even cooler. I want it to be really scary, and I want it to happen in our world today," Feig told Entertainment Weekly.

Ernie Hudson, who played Winston Zeddemore in the first Ghostbusters film and its sequel was critical of the new direction: "If it has nothing to do with the other two movies, and it's all female, then why are you calling it Ghostbusters?"

But in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, fellow cast member Bill Murray who played "parapsychologist" Peter Venkman, disagreed. "It sounds great to me. I would watch it," he said.

The film is expected to start shooting in New York this summer.