The divorce isn't likely to be a big incentive to license out his likeness. $7,000,000 is a drop in the bucket to Bill Murray and the money you get from action figures is a drop in the bucket when you're talking $7,000,000.
I think that's the problem. The whole idea of action figures is a very small blip on Murray's radar. Furthermore, Murray is notorious for having no agent or manager. If you want to offer him a part in your movie you need his personal number and you better hope he checks his voicemail (something he's known to be bad about).
Knowing these things about Murray I don't think it's a matter of him knowing the demand is there and refusing to do it. He's lost entire roles in movies because he's hard to reach. If a director can't get through to him to offer him a part what hope does someone from a toy company have?
As for the video game, this happened because Dan Aykroyd was really aggressively pursuing it. Aykroyd has the kind of history with Murray necessary to get something like the video game going. He really took the initiative with the game and got everyone on-board, and the sad truth is that I don't see Aykroyd doing this for other things like action figures.
Ultimately, I think Murray would be game if you could get the necessary papers in front of him to sign. He's obviously enormously talented but at the same time we're talking about a guy who did "Garfield" and "Charlie's Angels". He's not the kind of actor who is "too good" to take a gig for a quick buck, and even though the kind of money you get from something like action figures is really a non-issue to Murray I can't imagine him looking at the concept of a Venkman figure and thinking it would be more harmful to his career than some of the movies he's done.
But like I said, NECA said in March that they're working harder to get the likenesses than they did when they were actually doing "Ghostbusters" figures and they seem to be miracle workers in this respect and if there's one thing we've all learned from these once-impossible "miracle" licenses it seems like once somebody cuts through the red tape the floodgates open and they rights are available to everyone.
Anyways, like I said, '08 is the biggest year for "Ghostbusters" since '89 when the sequel was released, and that's a double-edged sword. When it comes to realistic "Ghostbusters" action figures there's two ways to look at '08: if it is ever gonna happen it's gonna be soon, but if it doesn't happen along with the video game, the Blu-Ray release of the films and the DVD release of the cartoon it's never gonna happen. '08 is pretty much gonna be "Ghostbusters" going out with a bang.
I would forgive Likeness for just having 4 Ghostbusters all geared up!!
