Paul Feig opens up about making all female Ghostbusters sequel

Paul Feig is excited about bringing an all-female Ghostbusters to screens in 2016, but accepting the job didn’t come easy for the Spy director.

In an interview with AlloCine during the Spy press tour, Feig admitted that he had been approached numerous times about doing a sequel to the 1984 blockbuster, but kept turning it down because he couldn’t figure out how to make the film in a way that would be both different and exciting.

“It’s a great franchise, it’s a great idea…but if I was going to do it, how would I do it?” Feig said, when explaining how he eventually came to his decision. “And I thought, well, if I could put four women in those key roles, that’s exciting to me. That I know how to do, and I know how to make that funny.”

Feig went on to praise the original films, saying he decided to make his own movie a reboot in part so that he wasn’t tied to them—but also because he could use it as a chance to explore the new characters. “I want to see the beginnings of this group, I want to see these people seeing ghosts for the first time, and how are we going to fight them, and how are they going to develop the technology?”

Ghostbusters is set to hit theaters July 2016.