Kevin Feige announced at Marvel Studios' Hall H panel on Saturday that Ryan Gosling will play Ghost Rider in a film arriving in 2028, directed by Shawn Levy and written by Jonathan Tropper.
Gosling is playing Johnny Blaze, the stunt rider who becomes the Spirit of Vengeance. It is his first superhero role.
The part he has been asking for
This is not a case of an actor being handed a franchise. Gosling has talked publicly about wanting to play Ghost Rider for years, long enough that the rumor became a running fixture in Marvel casting speculation.
His line on stage acknowledged as much: "As you know, this is a character I've wanted to play for a very long time. But if we're really going to do this, there's only one director who can do it." Levy then walked out to join him.
Where it actually came from
The detail that makes this more than a casting note is the origin.
Levy is directing Gosling in Star Wars: Starfighter, due May 28, 2027. According to both men, it was during that shoot that Gosling started describing his vision for Ghost Rider, and the two began developing it together on the side.
So: a director and a star, in the middle of making a Star Wars film, worked out a Marvel film between takes. Whatever else that says about the current state of blockbuster development, it explains why the pairing arrived fully formed rather than as a studio-assembled package — and why Gosling was adamant on stage about who had to direct it.
Levy is not new to Marvel. He made Deadpool & Wolverine, which is the most commercially successful thing he has done and, more to the point here, a film that worked because it understood the tone it was going for.
What Ghost Rider has been on screen
The character's screen history is thinner than his profile suggests. Nicolas Cage played Johnny Blaze in two Sony-produced films, in 2007 and 2011, neither of which was well received but both of which have acquired a certain affection, largely because of what Cage was doing in them. Gabriel Luna played the Robbie Reyes version on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
That is the whole of it. Which means Marvel is doing something it rarely gets to do with a recognizable name: making the first version of this character that a mainstream audience is likely to take seriously.
A supernatural property with a flaming skull, a motorcycle, and a demonic bargain at its center is also tonally distinct from most of what the studio has released recently — closer to horror than to team-up spectacle. Whether Marvel commits to that is the interesting question, and hiring the Deadpool & Wolverine director suggests the answer will be somewhere short of full horror.
2028 is a long wait. It is also, given that both men have a Star Wars film to release first, about as soon as this could realistically happen.
