Is a spot in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the cards for Ryan Gosling?
After the actor reportedly said he would want to play Ghost Rider in the Marvel superhero franchise, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said he would welcome the A-lister into the MCU family.
“Hey, man. If Ryan wants to be Ghost Rider…” Feige started to tell MTV News’ Josh Horowitz at San Diego Comic-Con. “Gosling’s unbelievable… I’d love to find a place for him in the MCU.” Referring to actor’s role in the Barbie movie, Feige continued, “He’s dressed up as Ken on Venice Beach and gets more press than giant movies coming out that weekend. Amazing!”
Horowitz interviewed Gosling for Netflix’s The Gray Man recently and says the actor actively wants to talk about a possible Ghost Rider role.
On camera, Gosling told MTV that “it doesn’t matter” how many superhero jobs he turned down over the years — apparently there may or may not be multiple — but that he’d “love to do it” eventually.
Nicolas Cage previously played Ghost Rider, the Johnny Blaze version from the comics. (Fun fact, the first of those movies from 2007 co-starred Gosling’s wife, actress Eva Mendes.) The film followed the former motorcycle stuntman who sold his soul to save the life of a loved one. In the present, he transforms into the Ghost Rider, an avenging agent of justice with a flaming skull for a head.
Cage returned as the character for 2011’s Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, which featured future MCU actor Idris Elba.
Sebastian Reuter/Getty Images; Marvel Comics Ryan Gosling apparently wants to play Ghost Rider and Marvel’s Kevin Feige is on board.
Actor Gabriel Luna later played a different version of Ghost Rider in ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — Robbie Reyes, a car mechanic who gets murdered and resurrected as Ghost Rider. A Ghost Rider spin-off at Hulu had once been in the works, but it never came to fruition.
“You’re talking about Ghost Rider, we’ve got Blade, we’ve got Doctor Strange at the supernatural angles,” Feige told MTV. “We’ve got the street level with our announcement of Daredevil and, of course, Spidey going into the street level heroes. And cosmic, and that’s where our friends Eros [played by Harry Styles] and Pip [played by Patton Oswalt] live.”
Marvel mapped out the entirety of Phase 4 and Phase 5, though there are a number of movies not yet announced in Phase 6, which already includes Fantastic Four, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, and Avengers: Secret Wars. Perhaps Ghost Rider will ride again, after all.
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