Heck, the summer of 2016 was chock full of failed reboots and sequels, with Alice Through the Looking Glass and Independence Day: Resurgence also being notable examples. Clearly Ghostbusters 2016 flopped because audiences rejected woke politics, not because they just didn't care to see a reboot of a movie franchise whose last cinematic venture was in 1989!
I myself am amazed at how people at Sony thought Ghostbusters 2016 could possibly succeed, but I think the general mindset at the time was that any reboot or sequel will rake in the big bucks, and then that was proven repeatedly to not really be true. To be fair though, the previous two years had brought us stuff like Dumb and Dumber To and Mad Max: Fury Road, so I can't fault executives for thinking people wanted long-awaited sequels and reboots.
The biggest problem with Ghostbusters 2016 wasn't sexism, or even the absolute garbage "humour" it was peddling. It was that the movie had nothing in common with the original films. The Plinkett review sums it up well. The jist of it, the original films succeeded because the concept (a bunch of shlubby guys basically starting an extermination company for ghosts) was original, and the cast were an all-star cast of good comedians. None of the cast in 2016 were ever funny (Melissa McCarthy is probably the single least funny person ever, and don't get me started on the lame, one-note Kate McKinnon)
Yeah it was just "hey we need a potential franchise, let's try this!" But I mean, this was like right after the big hack in 2014 - they just greenlit anything that could save the studio's bacon. That line of thinking led them to...The Emoji Movie.
---
People complaining about SJWs are such hypocrites when they're just as easily offended, if not moreso.