News broke Wednesday that Ivan Reitman dropped out of directing Ghostbusters 3 in the wake of the recent death of original Ghostbuster Harold Remis, but filming of the Sony-produced sequel is still scheduled for early 2015.

Reitman will instead help Amy Pacal of Sony Pictures Entertainment find a replacement director, saying that he was pleased with Etan Cohen’s script. Reitman agreed to work on the film as a producer, but expressed he is not up for helming the project after the loss of Remis last month.

“Harold got sick about three years ago, and we kept hoping he would get better. I kept pushing forward on the Etan Cohen and we now have a draft that is very good, that the studio is very excited about,” Reitman said.

“When I came back from Harold’s funeral, it was really moving and it made me think about a lot of things. I just finally met with Amy and Doug Belgrad when I got back. I said I’d been thinking about it for weeks, that I’d rather just produce this Ghostbusters. I told them I thought I could help but let’s find a really good director and make it with him. So that’s what we’ve agreed will happen. I didn’t want all kinds of speculation about what happened with me, that is the real story,” continued Reitman.

Ramis died at the age of 69 in his home in Chicago on Feb. 24 from complications related to auto-immune inflammatory vasculitis, which he had battled for four years.

Ramis’ Ghostbusters 1 and 2 co-writer and co-star Dan Aykroyd previously said that the third film in the franchise sees the original Ghostbusters team recruit a gang of younger scientists, in order to restart the poltergeist-catching business and keep it going for the future.

Reitman noted that Aykroyd is on board with the project, but it is not clear whether or not Bill Murray has agreed to appear in the third installment in Ghostbusters 3.

Image via Wikimedia Commons