After rumors about Ryan Gosling getting spotted around Hall H at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con celebration, it was confirmed during the Marvel Studios panel that he’s starring in a Ghost Rider movie with Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy directing! The film is set to ride like a bat out of hell toward cinemas in 2028.
To get people hyped for Ghost Rider, Gosling and Levy took the stage, with Levy confirming that he and Gosling had hashed out the details about Ghost Rider while filming Star Wars: Starfighter.
“Wow,” Gosling said after the reveal. “Is this really happening? As you know, this is a character I’ve wanted to play for a very long time.”
For several years, Ryan Gosling has remained the favorite to play Johnny Blaze, aka Ghost Rider, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Earlier this year, while talking about his new film, Project Hail Mary, on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Gosling urged fans not to lose hope regarding his chances of playing the chain-wielding hero with a head of flames.
“We’ll keep hope alive,” Gosling said on the podcast. “Some dicussions have been had. It’s a complicated situation.” Now, we know that Marvel and Gosling have reached common ground. Let the games begin!
Meanwhile, everyone remembers Marvel’s Ghost Rider movie from 2007, starring Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze. Directed and written by Mark Steven Johnson, the film also starred Eva Mendes and Sam Elliott, but its reception was mixed. Many Ghost Rider fans found Cage’s performance to be over-the-top, but this begs the question: What did you expect? Let’s not forget that 2007 was the same year that Spider-Man 3, Tim Story’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and Walt Disney’s Underdog were released. In other words, it was not a great year for superhero cinema. Still, a sequel titled Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance was released in 2011, with Cage reprising his role as Johnny Blaze, and the filmmakers behind Crank and Crank: High Voltage behind the camera. The sequel brought even more Cage-related wackiness to the character, ultimately leading to Ghost Rider’s retirement from feature-length films. Although years later, Gabriel Luna played Robbie Reyes, another version of Ghost Rider, for the fourth season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Fans enjoyed Luna’s interpretation of the character, though he only remained a part of the series for one season.