Paul Feig: 'The anti-Hillary Clinton movement harmed all-female Ghostbusters'

Paul Feig believes the reaction to Hillary Clinton's bid for U.S. presidency harmed his female-fronted Ghostbusters movie.

The 57-year-old director and the stars of the 2016 Ghostbusters - Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones - came under fire from fans of the original movies for their reboot, and the film ultimately under-performed at the box office.

During an interview on Jess Cagle's SiriusXM show, Feig insisted that the "anti-Hillary movement" played a big role in the hate against his movie.

"I think that some really brilliant author or researcher or sociologist needs to write a book about 2016 and how intertwined we were with Hillary and the anti-Hillary movement, it was just this year where, I don't know, just everyone went to a boiling point," he explained.

"I don't know if it was having an African American president for eight years teed them up or something, but they were ready to explode."

The filmmaker went on to reference a 2015 video Donald Trump shared on his Instagram page in which he appeared baffled by the idea of remaking Ghostbusters with an all-female cast.

"By the time I announced in... 2015, when I announced I was going to do it, it started. There's tape of Donald Trump being like, 'Now the Ghostbusters are women, what's going on?'" Feig continued. "Like, it's crazy how people got nuts about women trying to be in power or be in positions that they weren't normally in. It was an ugly, ugly year."

Meanwhile, a new Ghostbusters movie is set for release next year. Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which features original cast members Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, and Annie Potts, is scheduled to hit cinemas in March 2021 following a delay due to the coronavirus crisis.