Long before Sony Pictures ultimately moved forward with an all-female reboot of Ghostbusters, the studio spent years developing Ghostbusters 3, which would have brought back original Ghostbusters stars such as Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson and the late Harold Ramis, although they could never secure Bill Murray's involvement. While promoting his new comedy Spy, in theaters June 5, director Paul Feig explains that he was actually offered the Ghostbusters 3 job several times, but he kept turning it down because it didn't interest him, which is how he ultimately came up with the idea to reboot the franchise with four female leads, Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon. Here's what the director had to say below.

"I had been contacted several times about doing a sequel for Ghostbusters and I just kept turning it down because I didn't know how to do it. The scripts had been written, but I couldn't figure out how to do it. I wasn't excited about it. So finally, one day I was like, it's a great franchise and it's a great idea, if I was going to do it, how would I do it? And then I thought, if I could put four women in the lead roles, that's exciting to me. That I know how to do, and I know how to make that funny."

Paul Feig went on to explain that he wanted to make a reboot because he didn't want to "mess with" the original movies, and he wanted to see the origins of these new female Ghostbusters.

"Then I thought, I'd rather do it as a reboot so I wasn't tied to the old movies. The old movies are so good, I didn't want to mess with them. And I also want to see the beginnings of this group. I want to see people seeing ghosts for the first time, and how they're going to fight them for the first time, how they develop their technology. So it just got very exciting to me. I just love working with funny women, and that's all I really like to do with my career."

Sony Pictures has already handed out a July 22, 2016 release date for the all-female Ghostbusters, which is slated to begin production this summer. Sony is also reportedly developing Ghostbusters 4, which was rumored to star Chris Pratt and Channing Tatum, but it isn't known how far along that project is in development. That project would reportedly be tied into the original Ghostbusters franchise, but no details have been confirmed. What do you think about Paul Feig's all-female Ghostbusters reboot?