Ryan Gosling has what’s currently looking to be a hit in theaters this weekend, as Project Hail Mary—which rests almost entirely atop his shoulders, along with an assist from a cool little rock puppet guy—sets records for an opening weekend for studio Amazon MGM. As is apparently inevitable, pretty much any time anyone has success in Hollywood these days, Gosling’s latest bout of success has spawned new questions about when he’s going to get himself one of those superhero movies you’re always hearing about—conversations that Gosling himself actually kicked off a few years ago, when he made public statements that he’d love to take over Marvel character Ghost Rider, if nobody’s using it.
Gosling made those comments on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast back in 2022, and now here he is, back on the same show, addressing his continued desire to play a motorcycle man with a burning skeleton head. Although pretty dang guarded on the topic, Gosling confirmed in the latest interview that “Some discussions have been had” about the possibility of playing the character. (Back when Gosling’s interest in this particular hell-adjacent anti-hero came out, Marvel Man Kevin Feige reacted positively, saying “I’d love to find a place for him in the MCU.” Gosling is also currently deep in bed with Marvel owner Disney, starring in their upcoming Star Wars film Starfighter.) That being said, the path toward having a CGI fire skull does not appear to be smooth, with Gosling calling it “A complicated situation.”
The previous two Ghost Rider movies—which starred Nick Cage as the Johnny Blaze iteration of the famed skellington biker—were distributed at Sony, but the rights to the character apparently reverted to Marvel shortly after. The character has since appeared in Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., which—at the risk of engaging in rank speculation—might explain the “complicated” of it all. (The MCU has always treated the 2010s TV show as a bit of a poor relation, without usually outright treating it as non-canonical.) In any case, Ghost Rider appears to be the only superhero Gosling is especially interested in—when asked why, he just does that enigmatic shrug thing he does and says “It’s a feeling”—having previously shot down rumors that he was in conversations for other parts. For now, he told Horowitz “We’ll keep hope alive” about eventually getting to see his head be set aflame.
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