Dan Aykroyd on How John Belushi Would Have Made it to Broadway

In a recent interview with David Germain, Dan Aykroyd revealed that if his old friend and colleague John Belushi were still alive today, he would have moved from Hollywood to the Great White Way.

Aykroyd revealed, "I don't know today whether John, whether his spirit could take some of the abuse that you'd have to go through to be in the television, motion-picture business. He was very intellectual, John, and he was very well versed in theater and books and literature, science."

He added, "He would be probably one of the top Broadway directors, doing really, really special work, doing Shakespeare, doing Congreve, doing Shaw. That's the caliber of work he'd be doing. Although the rest of us would still be making buddy comedies, he would have definitely risen above all of that and gone on to do really important work."

Belushi was perhaps best known as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live and for his roles in the films National Lampoon's Animal House and The Blues Brothers.

Dan Aykroyd wrote the roles of Dr. Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters and Emmett Fitz-Hume in Spies Like Us with Belushi in mind, and the roles were actually played by Belushi's former SNL castmates Bill Murray and Chevy Chase, respectively.

At the time of his death in 1982, Belushi was pursuing several movie projects, including Noble Rot, an adaptation of a script by former Mary Tyler Moore Show writer and producer Jay Sandrich entitled Sweet Deception.