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Ghost Rider (200?)
Plot: Motorcycle stuntman named Johnny Blaze sells his soul to a dark force to save the life of his girlfriend. When the pact goes awry, Blaze becomes a fiery demonlike entity who takes out his wrath on bad guys. Based on the Marvel comic of the same name.
News:
11 April, 2003
The film has yet another new director. This time Mark Steven Johnson, hot off Daredevil, has stepped in to helm the picture. He will also be writing a new script for the project, so you can immediately discount the script we reviewed below. That can only be a good thing.
Johnson spoke to Empire magazine about why he took the project. "The Ghost Rider is one of the great icons in comics," he said. "It's that classic Devil and Daniel Webster story. A Faustian bargain that change's Johnny's life."
"The studio wants me to write my own version of Ghost Rider. I want to go back to the source material and use more of the comic. I'm just sitting down to write now. This project has been close to going before. Hopefully it's not cursed! I'm hoping that we could be shooting next winter."
15 April, 2002
The latest edition of The Untitled Deadpool Column features a review of Goyer's script. It's a mixed/negative review with some fairly minor spoilers.
Despite a rocky start, the script does eventually settle down and deliver the goods. By the goods, I mean violence and lots of it. When the Ghost Rider appears, very bad things happen to bad people. For example, consider a passage like "Thundering past like an Amtrak train, the Ghost Rider punches a flaming fist right through Albright's face." There are numerous action sequences where the Spirit of Vengeance is unleashed and, forgive the pun, all hell breaks lose. It's in these sections that the script comes to life with imaginative sequences that utilize the demon's abilities very nicely. Odds are the special effects budget for this movie will have to be enormous.
You can read the entire review here.
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1 November, 2001
Cage is out. Scheduling conflicts and new interests have him headed for the lead role in the adaptation of Constantine instead.
3 July, 2001
It's official. Nicolas Cage will play the lead in the movie. Empire Online spoke to Jon Voight, one of the movie's producers, who confirmed the signing. "It's very exciting - we've got the script and Nic Cage is going to do it. It's going to be quite terrific," says Voight.
Not only that but Voight says he might appear in the film too. "I may be acting in it. I grew up with comics. I'm a fan of things of the imagination. Science fiction gives you a achance to use your imagination and lets you paint with a larger brush, so I like that."
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21 June, 2001
Nicolas Cage is apparently in negotiations to play Johnny Blaze. It seems that David Goyer's latest script was particularly well received and the project is now starting to move forward rapidly. Budgeted for $75 million, it will be the most expensive ever for Dimension Films.
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16 May, 2001
Well in advance of anything, there is a poster for this movie hanging around this year's Cannes Film Festival.
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Talk about it on the Forums
16 October, 2000
David Goyer is busily writing the script for a movie adaptation of the comic Ghost Rider. Despite that don't hold your breath waiting for this one. Goyer talked about the project in an interview with Eon magazine. "The [WGA and SGA] strike may effect GHOST RIDER," says Goyer. "Along with the writers strike, there's also the actors strike that's coming up and I'm working on GHOST RIDER now trying to get a draft done. The financiers are under the hope that the movie can happen before the strike, but I don't really see that happening."
One of the more interesting concepts is of how to visualize the Ghost Rider. In the comics he was always portrayed as a black leather clad skeleton with a flaming skull. Goyer and director Steven Norrington have a slightly different idea in mind. "Norrington and I were talking about that," chuckles the writer. "He's probably not always going to be in black leather. What's interesting about how we're talking about portraying the Ghost Rider, when he is the Ghost Rider he is a skeleton. We're treating the flames as if there were still muscle and sinew on his body, but it was translucent and the flames comprise the muscle and sinew. So there's like a little bit of a three-dimensional quality. It's like if you can envision blue flames constantly coursing over him, but the blue flames kind of form the sinews around the skeleton. Also, the flame itself is going to have a performance element so as he gets angrier he's going to sort of flame up even more and when he's calm it'll die down. He's probably not going to speak as the Ghost Rider either, or if he does it's only going to be one line. He's not going to talk like he does in the comics."
You can read the entire interview here.
7 July, 2000
In case you haven't heard, there is an attempt being made to turn the Marvel comic Ghost Rider into a movie. Marvel and Crystal Sky Entertainment are teaming up with Jon Voight as a producer to make the film. An early script has been written by David Goyer (Blade) that will serve as a basis for the film. That script won't be the final one by any stretch of the imagination but it fell into the hands of master script reviewer Stax so that you can find out what it's like.
Ghost Rider's very nature makes for strictly B-movie fare so I'm all for the filmmakers trying to have some fun with the material. The screenwriters clearly realized the ridiculous degree to which they were asking people to suspend their disbelief; their consistent use of sardonic (but not campy) humor acknowledged as much. But just because Ghost Rider is "just a B-movie" doesn't mean it can't have a stronger story; The Mummy and Escape From New York are examples of a better standard of B-movie. While there was a lot of visceral imagery and several entertaining moments in this draft, the cliché "devil comes to earth" plot and an array of under-developed characters hurt the overall story. I hope that David Goyer's future efforts on Ghost Rider will bring a much-needed clarity and depth to the story. As a comic book fan, I'm still interested in seeing a Ghost Rider movie. But after reading this "starting point" draft, I'm glad the filmmakers have decided to re-conceptualize and simplify the story. - STAX
To read the entire review, head to Stax's home at FilmForce.
