Ryan Gosling’s ‘Ghost Rider’ Is Coming to Resurrect the MCU

After years of speculation, rumors, and Ryan Gosling himself mounting a very public casting campaign, it’s official: the fiery-hot film star is joining the MCU as fiery-hot anti-hero Ghost Rider. The news came on stage at Comic Con over the weekend, as part of Marvel’s typically reveal-heavy Hall H presentation, one of the biggest yearly events on the geek calendar; the showcase also saw new footage from Avengers: Doomsday, as well as the announcement of Industry’s David Jonsson as the new Black Panther, with his film set to release in December 2028.Of course, the loudest reaction was reserved for The Gos, who mounted the stage in a slick red jacket. (There are a few rules in life: death, taxes, and Ryan Gosling rocking a cool jacket wherever he goes.) He was introduced by MCU head honcho Kevin Feige, following a back-and-forth bit with Happy Sad Confused host Josh Horowitz, who has frequently quizzed both Feige and Gosling about the long-standing Ghost Rider rumors. (Appropriately, Gosling appeared on stage to synth-punk band Suicide’s “Ghost Rider,” the gnarly electro-rock track famously sampled by M.I.A. on “Born Free.”) It was also announced that the film will be directed by Shawn Levy, as well as written by Jonathan Tropper. Both just worked with Gosling on Star Wars: Starfighter, which is set to arrive in May 2027. Ghost Rider will come in 2028.As with the upcoming Star Wars entry, Ghost Rider will see Gosling join another major franchise while it is in a relatively weird spot. Much has already been made about the decline of superhero movies at the global box office, and Marvel is no longer the movie mega-behemoth it once was, when it regularly turned out billion-dollar-plus hits. Some are even questioning whether the new Avengers movie, the aforementioned Doomsday, is gonna have the juice—and that’s with a nostalgia-packed cast featuring the very best of the 2000s X-Men, plus the return of big names like Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr.But if there’s anyone that’s going to bring fresh excitement to a franchise on the wane, it’s Gosling. And this one really ticks a bunch of boxes: the fans have wanted it for years, so consider them serviced; Gosling is one of those rare actors beloved by both normies and big-time film buffs, so you’d imagine that even the biggest comic-book-movie skeptics will be tempted to turn out on his name alone. Playing a biker from hell, you’d also suspect he’ll get to wear another sick jacket—which must, by this point, be one of his contractual stipulations. So, can we pronounce Marvel to be “so back”? Well, let’s see how Doomsday does first. (The new Spider-Man will probably make bank, but Spidey always does.) But Gosling has clearly dialed up the excite-o-meter in a way we haven’t seen for some time. We’ll rev our engines to that.This article originally appeared in British GQ.