If the Marvel Studios panel at Comic-Con ended with Black Panther III, had a large ancient helping of Avengers: Doomsday in the middle, it stands to
If the Marvel Studios panel at Comic-Con ended with Black Panther III, had a large ancient helping of Avengers: Doomsday in the middle, it stands to reason that it would have had a banger of a beginning. And it didn’t disappoint, with Kevin Feige revealing that Ghost Rider is returning to the large screen. Not played, this time, by Nicolas Cage, but by Ryan Gosling, who showed up to an earsplitting reception from the 6,500 souls (double that to account for the amount of Doomsday stars who were also in the room).
“Is this really happening?” asked Gosling. It was. It was really happening. “As you know, this is a character I’ve wanted to play for a very long time. If we’re really going to do this, there’s only one director who can do it.”
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Before the audience could play the guessing game (Empire was on the verge of putting our life savings on Uwe Boll), Feige and Gosling confirmed that Shawn Levy, who directed Deadpool & Wolverine for Marvel Studios and who recently worked with Gosling on next year’s Star Wars movie, Starfighter, was that man. Levy bounded out on stage to reveal how this next collab with Gosling (“Who I think we would all agree is the absolute shit, right?”) came about. “We spent a lot of time last year making Starfighter, and Ryan started talking about his vision for this character, and the opportunity, and what this movie could be, and finally I was like, ‘Bro, let’s ride!’”
Now, of course, announcements have been made on the Hall H stage before that haven’t come to fruition. The Inhumans movie, for one. It was just a few years ago that Mahershala Ali popped in to announce that he was playing Blade, a movie that is still very much unmade (turns out making a Blade movie is like ice-skating uphill). But this Ghost Rider is not only happening, it’s coming out in 2028.
“It was Gosling who had the vision.”
Which means that there’s no MCU movie between Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, which is due in cinemas next December. Something Feige talked about when we caught up with him after the panel. “A lot of it is a strategy we’ve talked about for a while, of focusing on quality,” he said. “We always try to focus on quality, but when quantity is so much, you get spread thin. We didn’t want to be spread thin, and the Avengers is as important as it comes. And Secret Wars, in particular for Empire readers, who know the comics, is a setup in and of itself to the future, to what’s next. So really, it was landing those two movies and setting up 2028, of which we’ve revealed two of them so far, Ghost Rider and Panther III.”
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That ‘so far’, casually dropped in there by Feige, is very captivating. Might there be at least one more movie to come in 2028, set in an MCU which will, it’s unthreatening to say, be significantly remade by the events of Secret Wars? For now, those two movies have given us plenty to chew on: a third Black Panther, delivering an old-school, customary MCU heavy-hitter but with a twist in the arrival of David Jonsson; and Ghost Rider, a character making his MCU big-screen debut.
Cage, of course, starred in two non-MCU Ghost Rider movies, and the character appeared in Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., but Gosling and Levy’s presence would indicate that this Spirit Of Vengeance is going to have the kind of budget and backing that would set your skull on fire. Feige is tightlipped about details just yet, but did say that Gosling has been the driver. “It was Gosling who had the vision,” he told us. “It was Gosling who had the pitch that won over Shawn, that had them come and pitch us this idea, which led to us on stage today.” Start your engines.
