Ernie Hud­son, now 63, has been speak­ing with IESB about movies, act­ing and his thoughts on the third Ghost­busters movie.

IESB: When you hear all the rumors about the pos­si­bil­ity of a Ghost­busters 3 for all these years, is that some­thing you hope will even­tu­ally hap­pen, or have you just become indif­fer­ent about it because you’ve been wait­ing for so long?

Ernie: We did the first Ghost­busters, and that was really try­ing for me, in a lot of ways. I worked really hard on the movie for four months, and then the movie came out and was very suc­cess­ful, but work didn’t nec­es­sar­ily come for me, as a result of it. And then, it took five years to get the sec­ond one ready, and that was a chal­lenge, too. Now, it’s been 20 years since the sec­ond one.

I knew Bill Mur­ray really loved the fran­chise, but he was the hold-out. The dis­cus­sion with him has always been that he really wants to do some­thing excep­tional. We tapped into some­thing that was really cre­ative and dif­fer­ent with the first one, so you want to be able to bring that chal­lenge to it. The whole eco­nomic thing becomes an excuse to do noth­ing, so the ten­dency with stu­dios is, “Okay, let’s just do some­thing.” And then, because we have the audi­ence out there, even if we do some­thing bad, by the time they real­ize it’s bad, we’ll have made the money. But, I know that’s not what Bill Mur­ray wants to do, and that’s cer­tainly not some­thing I want to do.

It’s a real catch-22 because you really would love to do another one, since the fans have been ask­ing for it, but you also want to be able to stand by the work that you do. I’m really happy to have been a part of the movie. A lot of actors work for years and never find [some­thing that spe­cial]. Ghost­busters is nice to have in my fil­mog­ra­phy. Wher­ever I go, peo­ple have seen the movie and love it, so that’s really nice.

IESB: So, you’d be happy to return for another film, if they get a script together?

Ernie: I would love to do the movie, for a vari­ety of rea­sons, not the least of which is that I’d love to get paid. So, when Bill Mur­ray says, “I only want to do it if it’s some­thing really extra­or­di­nary that we can really com­mit to,” it’s a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent than my thing. I’m say­ing that I only want to do the movie for that rea­son, unless they pay me a lot of money. I’m prob­a­bly more con­scious of that. But, the fans are there. Wher­ever I go, peo­ple are always ask­ing about it. I think the stu­dio wants to do it, but hope­fully the script will be really good.

Harold Ramis is tak­ing the lead in it, from what I’ve been read­ing. I hear about it like the fans do. I saw Harold at the open­ing of his film Year One in New York, so I know that he’s been putting together a script that every­one will be happy with. I talked to Bill recently, and I know that Danny [Aykroyd] has been want­ing to do it since the day we fin­ished the sec­ond one. We’re all up for it. It just has to be some­thing we can be proud of and stand by. I’d love for it to hap­pen. I think it would be very, very cool. But, it really needs to be some­thing that makes sense. I don’t want to just do a cameo. If we’re going to do it, I want to be involved.

IESB: Did you enjoy return­ing to the char­ac­ter for the recent video game?

Ernie: I really was very happy with the game because the char­ac­ters were very much there. My char­ac­ter was totally involved. It was a lot of fun to do the voice-over, and hav­ing all the guys back to do it was really cool. So, I’m hop­ing the movie hap­pens, but I have not heard from Ivan Reit­man or the stu­dio, or any­body who signs checks. Until that hap­pens, it’s still just spec­u­la­tion. They also came out with a whole new series of toys. Wher­ever I travel, or when I was doing the play, peo­ple show up with the toys for me to sign.