Despite being universally slammed by critics worldwide, the first Ghost Rider film made a reputation for itself as a fun film that was extremely easy to watch, and just as easy to laugh at; but as it managed to take $230 million at the Box Office, the critics views were essentially rendered null and void; and ever since then, Columbia have been working on developing a sequel.
The planned sequel has gone through a number of problems and changes that have led to numerous development stalls so far, but now things are gearing up a notch, as the writers of both Gamer, and the first and second Crank movies; Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor; are in negotiations to develop the next movie in the series, which is apparently going by the name of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.
The first film explored the origin of the superhero Ghost Rider (who’s yet another character of Marvel’s that made it into cinemas; along with Iron Man, The Fantastic Four, Captain America, Thor, and Nick Fury, to name but a few); a character by the name of Johnny Blaze (played by National Treasure’s Nicholas Cage), who agrees to become a servant of the devil, and track down demons (whilst riding round with a flaming skull and a motorbike that’s permanently ablaze), in order to save his father’s life.
And despite the rumours floating around a couple of months back, that suggested Nicholas Cage would not be returning (as he is fairly busy with promoting The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and possibly working on the third National Treasure picture), he is also in talks to once again reprise his role as the combustible anti-hero; in a script that was originally written by David Goyer (the scribe responsible for Batman Begins, Flashfoward, The Dark Knight, Blade, the planned Batman 3, and a number of other extremely successful, and/or upcoming, movies that are often based around comic book heroes), but will likely receive a fair bit of editing by Neveldine and Taylor.
And if everything goes according to plan, filming will likely begin before this November, because if Columbia leave it any later, the rights to the franchise, and any future films, automatically revert back to Marvel (meaning they could potentially lose out on another couple of hundred million dollars; which is a pretty big incentive to get the ball rolling), who would likely incorporate the character into their ever growing catalogue of movies to release.
For now though, things are looking promising for Ghost Rider fans; with Cage coming back and letting his inner-mad man run wild, and getting both the crazy, and the adrenaline fueled action, cranked up to 11, by the guys behind the Crank series; the only questions so far, is who will direct? as Sony/Columbia have been looking at a number of hopefuls, none of whom include Mark Steven Johnson (the director of the first film), and will the studio still be pushing for the tentative 2011 release date, or pushing the release back until 2012? hoping to find a slot to squeeze it in amongst the massive number of projected blockbusters due out that year.
