Paul Feig calls out geek culture and 'asshole' fans over Ghostbusters comments (update)

Paul Feig, director of Sony's upcoming Ghostbusters, thinks there's a major problem with "assholes in geek culture."

Feig, who's come under attack pretty much since the announcement was made that he'd be rebooting the series with a female cast, told the New York Daily News that after being attacked for close to a year, he had started hitting back at the people lashing out at him.

"Geek culture is home to some of the biggest assholes I've ever met in my life," Feig told the paper.

Feig added that he couldn't care less about the background or appearance of any of his actors. As long as they were funny, he would go to bat for them. He added that the movie's star, Melissa McCarthy, had also received an absurd amount of backlash from fans of the original film, and said she has a "very undefinable quality" of charisma.

"Melissa McCarthy is just this hilarious woman who is just so funny," Feige said, adding that he didn't listen to and doesn't care about the people who attacked the actress for her physical appearance.

Recently, a campaign was started online to downvote the Ghostbusters trailer into oblivion. It has become one of the most downvoted trailers on YouTube, but Feige said he doesn't pay attention to any of it.

Ghostbusters, which stars McCarthy alongside Leslie Jones, Kate McKinnon and Kristen Wiig, hits theaters July 15, 2016.

Update: The comments Paul Feig made about geek culture were not about the Ghostbusters trailer, as originally reported by the New York Daily News. The quotes were from a year-and-a-half ago and were given in a separate interview to promote Feig's upcoming book about geek culture. The quotes were misleadingly given to the Daily News as Feig's rebuttal to the trailer, but the paper issued a correction this past weekend. Feig's full statement can be read here.