‘Ghost Rider’ Writer Has a Blood-Curdling Pitch for Marvel’s MCU Reboot
Few superheroes are as ill-suited to a family-friendly leash as a motorcycle rider with a flaming skull for a head. Even so, the 2007 ‘Ghost Rider’ starring Nicolas Cage went for a PG-13 rating to appeal to a wider audience, as did its sequel, ‘Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance’. The result was a Spirit of Vengeance that burned bright but rarely bit.
Marvel Studios is now giving the character another shot. At San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel Studios announced during its Hall H panel that Ghost Rider will get his own feature in the MCU, with Ryan Gosling taking the reins as the antihero. Shawn Levy, who directed ‘Deadpool & Wolverine,’ is set to direct, and that film stands as the highest-grossing R-rated release of all time with $1.33 billion worldwide.
The film has an official release date of July 28, 2028, but its rating remains unclear. That open question has drawn in a writer who knows the character better than most. According to MCU Film News, Marvel Comics writer Benjamin Percy wants the reboot to embrace brutal, R-rated horror with a “Hellraiser-style” approach.
Percy laid out his thinking in an exclusive chat with ComicBook.com. “I would lean towards the R-rated horror version of the character and not do the standard cape and spandex, MCU type,” he said, adding that the approach can work for an ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ or X-Men storyline. His preference for this particular character is far more graphic.
Percy pictures “Johnny pulling hot chains out of his mouth, ‘Hellraiser’ style, or his skin melting right off of him with a halo of flames around”. His blunt summary of the goal was “give us the body horror” and “a really hellish iteration of Ghost Rider on the screen”. It is a long way from the clean, quippy heroics most MCU fans are used to.
Asked whether Marvel Studios is overdue to open a horror corner of the MCU, Percy answered, “We live in a golden age of horror. It’s time.” Coming from a self-described horror head, the line reads less like a pitch and more like a plea.
The writer has the résumé to back it up. Percy worked on Marvel’s ‘Ghost Rider’ comic series between 2022 and 2023, and his run is viewed as some of the best lore the character has had in years because of its nod to 1970s cult and underground horror. He also created “Hellverine,” a version of Wolverine bonded to a demon.
That series wore its influences openly. In an interview with AIPT, Percy confirmed that there was serious body horror in the book and that the ‘Hellraiser’ franchise was a major influence. Reviewers noticed too, with one critic describing the collected edition as adults-only violence in a story that’s ‘Hellraiser’ meets Wolverine.
The idea has plenty of momentum behind it. DC just won the box office with an R-rated supervillain movie, ‘Clayface,’ and horror has become as big at the movies as superhero stories. Marvel has also dabbled in the macabre before, since ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ reanimated and puppeted the corpse of a dead Stephen Strange variant with the help of demon spirits.
Other commentators are making the same case. One argument holds that ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ already proved there is an appetite for R-rated MCU films, and that Gosling and Levy should make ‘Ghost Rider’ as scary as possible. The risk, as that piece warns, is a sanitized version of the character.
For now, Marvel has not said a word about rating or tone. There are also hints at what could haunt Gosling’s Johnny Blaze, since Sacha Baron Cohen has already been established as the MCU’s Mephisto in ‘Ironheart’.
Percy, meanwhile, has moved on to other projects. His next is the Audible sci-fi thriller series ‘Exoplanet,’ launching next month. Still, if Marvel is listening, the man who spent years sending Johnny Blaze down America’s haunted backroads has made his wish list very clear.
