Bill Murray's character was to be killed in 'Ghostbusters 3'

London: Filmmaker Ivan Reitman says if 'Ghostbuster 3' had happened it would have featured Bill Murray's character Peter Venkman dying.

Bill Murray. Pic/AFP

The 65-year-old actor wasn't interested on revisiting the franchise after the 1989 sequel, so the only way of getting him to return was to ensure his character would be killed off, reported Contactmusic.

"Bill and Sigourney's kid, Oscar, is a postgrad student, and weird things start to happen. Bill Murray dies in the first scene, because he always said, 'I won't do it unless I die'.

"And I said, 'Okay, you got it.' It was a father-son story, with him as a ghost. By the way, the studio green-lit it. Everything was ready to go. I couldn't get his attention, and in the midst of that, Harold got really sick. And that was pretty much it," Reitman said.

Apart from Murray, the rest of the original cast was up for coming together again.

"Bill was always the holdout. I think he was just not interested. He loves 'Ghostsbusters,' and he appreciated all the good that it did for all of us, but he just wanted to pursue different things as an actor. And at the same time he didn't want to do anything that would sully the other movies," the 69-year-old director said.