Paul Feig’s All-Female GHOSTBUSTERS Receives The Prestigious Dan Aykroyd Seal Of Approval

Yesterday's news cycle was a sumptuous buffet of crazy-yet-all-too-believable rumors, exciting new project announcements and not-all-that-surprising casting confirmations. Today, eh, not so much. What can I say? When it rains, it pours. And when it doesn't rain, we turn to official statements from Dan Aykroyd re: the casting of Paul Feig's Ghostbusters reboot to pass the time.

When asked by The Hollywood Reporter how he felt about yesterday's announcement (which revealed Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, Melissa McCarthy and Kate McKinnon as your 2016 Ghostbusters), Dan Aykroyd offered the following:

The Aykroyd family is delighted by this inheritance of the Ghostbusters torch by these most magnificent women in comedy. My great grandfather, Dr. Sam Aykroyd, the original Ghostbuster, was a man who empowered women in his day and this is a beautiful development in the legacy of our family business.

While the entire Aykroyd family may have given its seal of approval to Feig's reboot (which we've since learned will arrive on July 22 of next year), reactions elsewhere were, well, not so supportive. The same sort of backwards-thinking clowns who lost their shit over Michael B. Jordan playing The Human Torch swung back into action on Twitter yesterday, whinging up a storm over Feig's female-centric lineup and proving that - once again - we really don't deserve nice things.

But, hey, let's not allow said clowns to overshadow the circus. For most of us, yesterday's Ghostbusters news was a reason to celebrate: not only is Feig's take on the property fresh, but the women involved are all gifted comic performers, performers who unquestionably have the talent to deliver something worth getting excited about. We'll have to wait and see on the screenplay front, of course*, but for now I think we've been given enough information to be cautiously optimistic. Moreso than we might've been if, say, the original team had been put back together. That was a bad idea from the get-go, whereas this...well, this could be something special.

Fingers crossed, Paul Feig. We - and the Aykroyd family - support you.

* = To say nothing of those other casting rumors. HitFix's now-redacted scoop - about a certain someone coming onboard to fill the "dickless bureaucrat" role William Atherton originated in Ghostbusters '84 - raises a number of questions, and I'm sure we're all very interested to see how that shakes out.