This is what Paul Feig wrote to the head of Sony Amy Pascal when said she was going to be seeing Ivan Reitman, Dan Akroyd, Bill Murray and Sigourney Weaver and wanted to know the best way to characterize the film to them.

"Here’s my take on it: It’s a reboot of the franchise in a world (our world) that has never actually had any legitimate contact with the ghost world. Our villain ghost is an executed murderer, a Ted Kazinski type (think Peter Dinklage) who has left behind a manifesto of how he wants to change and destroy the world. When his execution is hit by a supercharged electrical storm, he is turned into a powerful ghost able to rouse other villainous spirits from the ghost world to carry out the ever-expanding plans of his manifesto. Our four new female Ghostbusters come together in an origin story that sees them forming a team based on their diverse skills and plays with the invention and trial-and-error of their various Ghostbusting technology and techniques as they try to stop the villain and his ever growing force of evil ghosts, which is a boring way of saying that we’ll see four very different women come together and figure out in funny, scary and action-packed ways how to save New York City and the world.

This first film will deal with this one mission and the formation of our team and the evolution of their hardware and by the end result in them forming their actual Ghostbusters business, versus starting a business mid-film like the original movie. However, I would like to keep their business as a secret government agency in a world where the government has worked hard to cover up the events of this first reboot in order to keep the public from knowing that there is now a possible reoccurring ghost threat over our country. (I’m playing with the idea that, a la Close Encounters, the government stages an evacuation of mid-town Manhattan to keep the public from knowing about the ghost threat, so that even though most of mid-town Manhattan is a mess after the final battle, they are able to explain it away as a gas explosion or something to that effect. This will keep the franchise from having to denounce the Ghostbusters in a sequel or drop them back into a world in which the public is now fully aware of ghosts. This will give the franchise much more longevity. There’s a funny dynamic we want to play with where the government eventually starts working with the Ghostbusters but has to keep denouncing them publicly, having a Cecily Strong type character always saying terrible things about them in press conferences and then apologizing to them behind the scenes, even though her public attacks on them get more and more personal. “I’m sorry, I just have to make it sound convincing.”)

Tonally, the movie will be a bit scarier and more hi-tech than the original and the set pieces will be bigger, while still being very funny. For example, I want in the third act to have the entire police force and army accompany the Ghostbusters to the final battle but since our villain only wants to deal with the Ghostbusters and wants to make the government look ridiculous, he possesses the entire police and army forces and makes them do a big ridiculous dance number in the middle of Fifth Avenue, thus neutralizing them (and delighting himself). I think that having our main villain be both evil and funny in the ways screws with our world as he’s trying to carry out the points of his manifesto (get revenge on everyone who slighted him, humiliate and take down Wall Street, make the United States look ridiculous to the rest of the world and eventually destroy NYC, which to him is the brain of the US), as well as have fun with the ghosts he picks to carry out various tasks (could be all dead villains and famous criminals he recruits from the ghost world and - in what I think could be a billion dollar idea - recruits the ghosts of evil beings from other parts of the universe - yes, ghost aliens! “Our world isn’t the only place in the universe with bad and dangerous beings that have died, you know. There’s a lot of bored dead monsters out there who are just looking for something to do.”)

You can read the email here.