Three years after Ghost Rider was a commercial success despite a critical drubbing, Columbia Pictures is readying a sequel for 2012 by getting some quality thespians alongside Nicolas Cage (his hairstyle is to be determined).
Just reading the premise for the sequel, it gives off a Rambo III vibe as far as how the story begins. The story involves Johnny Blaze, aka Ghost Rider (Cage), hiding out in remote Eastern Europe and struggling to repress his curse. Blaze is then recruited by a sect to take on the devil, who wants to take over his mortal son’s body on the kid’s birthday.
Less than a week ago, Ciaran Hinds (Munich, Race to Witch Mountain) signed on to play “The Devil”. Now, two other names are circling the project. Idris Elba (TV’s The Wire, Takers) will play an alcoholic warrior monk who has to find the Ghost Rider. Johnny Whitworth’s (Gamer, 3:10 to Yuma) role is that of a criminal who is recruited by the devil to find the boy and is later turned into a demonic creature.
Thankfully, not a part of the sequel is writer/director Mark Steven Johnson, who went from Daredevil to Ghost Rider to When in Rome in the span of seven years. Though, his replacements are hit or miss when it comes to their movies of late. Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, leaders of ADD filmmaking thanks to their films Crank, Crank 2: High Voltage and Gamer, are sitting behind the camera. This will be their first crack at handling a Marvel Comics property. Previously, they were involved with the making of DC Comics’ Jonah Hex, but left the project after creative differences. That resulted in a turkey of a film where they only received screenwriting credit; Jimmy Hayward, of the 2008 animated hit Horton Hears a Who!, was the director.
Working from a story by David S. Goyer, who has done screenplays and stories for Christopher Nolan’s Batman franchise, the series of Blade films, and the upcoming Superman: Man of Steel project, Neveldine and Taylor also wrote the script.
Production will commence in November in the countries of Romania and Turkey.
I was never crazy about the first Ghost Rider movie. The only time I got giddy was at the sight of Sam Elliot, who is just an all-time bad-ass. Sure, he may have gotten the short end of the stick in Road House, but he was a hell of a bouncer. The addition of Idris Elba just about ensures that I’ll be seeing this. The guy is slick. Even in a flick like Takers, where it is mostly geared toward fans of rappers T.I. and Chris Brown, Elba was the ultimate professional. Like Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs.
Both Ghost Rider: SoV and next summer’s Thor will give Elba even more visibility, and help him when he navigates from strong supporting character to leading man in a new adaptation James Patterson’s best-selling Alex Cross books. Two of Patterson’s Cross novels were adapted into films starring Morgan Freeman: Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider.
