An early palate cleanser. There’s lots of grumbling about this in my Twitter timeline, but not from me. I’ve grown fatalistic about reboot mania. If we’re doomed to have our collective movie diet consist of nothing but remake slop, I’ll take a Kristen Wiig/Melissa McCarthy “Ghostbusters” reprise any day of the week over the fifth or sixth regurgitations of Spider-Man.

In fact, let’s also go ahead and greenlight that “Back to the Future” reboot with Michael Cera that we all know is coming. Featuring Russell Brand as Emmett “Doc” Brown! Leave nothing in your wake, Hollywood.

After a long search, Sony is zeroing in on a director for Ghostbusters 3, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Paul Feig, director of Bridesmaids and The Heat, has emerged as the front-runner, according to sources, and Feig has shown interest in taking on the project. Sources caution that no formal negotiations have taken place and a lot must be worked out before the casual discussions turn serious and Feig accepts the job. But he is the studio’s first choice, these sources said. Sony declined to comment.

Sources say the film will be a reboot focusing on female Ghostbusters…

The story introduces new Ghostbusters and hands the baton from at least a couple of the originals. Dan Aykroyd has said he will return but Bill Murray has not committed.

EW wonders if it’ll be a “Bridemaids” reunion — Wiig, McCarthy, Maya Rudolph, and Rose Byrne — or an SNL reunion with Wiig, Rudolph, Tina Fey, and Amy Poehler. Dan Aykroyd, who’s sounded open to a “Ghostbusters” sequel in the past, will probably end up in the mix too as Ray Stantz. Per “Star Wars,” it’s an unwritten rule that when you’re rebooting an especially beloved film franchise, you need some of the original cast present for official torch-passing purposes. When this trend hits its nadir and someone decides to reboot “The Godfather,” it’ll be a comfort to know that Pacino or De Niro will be playing Don Corleone to Leonardo Di Caprio’s Michael.

Part of the reason people are irritated about rebooting “Ghostbusters” is, of course, because it’s an especially fond movie memory. Similarly, if news broke today that someone was remaking “The Shawshank Redemption,” there’d be riots. But I think part of it too is that redoing the movie with an all-woman cast in the lead feels gimmicky, as if Hollywood’s idea of “creativity” these days is to recycle a classic wholesale except with one showy twist in the cast list. The director of the reboot was grumbling about that criticism this morning, as if there’s something sexist to the charge, but he’s missing the point. It’s not that Americans don’t want to see a buddy movie with women stars like Wiig, McCarthy, et al; obviously they do or else “Bridesmaids” wouldn’t have been a hit. What they don’t want is a story they already know where the big selling point is — geepers — that the new cast is a different gender from the old cast. Or am I giving moviegoers too much credit? This movie’s going to gross $200 million minimum no matter how derivative it is of the original, right?

Either way, we’re bound to get some truly awful Internet think pieces afterward on the role of gender in both “Ghostbusters” films, and for that we should all be grateful.