Ryan Gosling Announced As The Next Ghost Rider And The Internet Is On Fire

Fire Motorcycle

During Marvel Studios' Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con on July 25, 2026, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige took the stage and told the audience that he keeps secrets to maintain surprises, then acknowledged he had been fielding the same question from fans for years: when would Ryan Gosling finally join the MCU as Ghost Rider? He then pounced on film critic Josh Horowitz in the audience, who had a microphone, and told him to ask the question. Horowitz asked it. And Ryan Gosling walked out onto the stage to a roar from the crowd that could reasonably be heard from outside the convention center. "Wow, is this really happening?" Gosling told the audience. "As you know, this is a character I've wanted to play for a very long time." He has been publicly expressing that desire for years, and fans have spent nearly as long agreeing he was the perfect fit. Ghost Rider will hit theaters in 2028, directed by Shawn Levy, with a screenplay by Jonathan Tropper. Levy, who directed Deadpool and Wolverine, told the crowd that he and Gosling had spent most of their downtime on the set of their upcoming Star Wars film, Starfighter, riffing about Ghost Rider. "And finally I was like: bro, let's ride."

Ghost Rider is one of Marvel's most visually iconic characters, a motorcycle stuntman named Johnny Blaze who makes a deal with a demonic figure to save someone he loves and is transformed into a supernatural spirit of vengeance, his skull wreathed in hellfire every night. The character was previously portrayed by Nicolas Cage in two Sony films in 2007 and 2012, and later by Gabriel Luna in the Marvel-ABC television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. This will be the character's debut in the MCU proper, and the announcement sparked immediate discussion about whether Eva Mendes, who starred in the original 2007 Ghost Rider film alongside Cage and has been Gosling's real-life partner for over a decade, might appear in the new version. Feige did not address that question on stage. Gosling himself has been on an extraordinary run, coming off Project Hail Mary, which grossed over 684 million dollars worldwide, and Star Wars: Starfighter still to come in May 2027. Adding Ghost Rider to that trajectory, playing the character he has been asking for publicly for years, makes the Comic-Con moment feel like the conclusion of a very long and patient wish finally being granted.