Ryan Gosling Sold Shawn Levy on His GHOST RIDER Movie With a Six-Minute Pitch

Ryan Gosling apparently didn’t need a massive presentation, or much convincing to get Shawn Levy interested in Ghost Rider. He needed six minutes.

The actor came to the Deadpool & Wolverine director with his vision for bringing the flaming-skulled Marvel hero into the MCU, and Levy was ready to make the movie before Gosling had even hit the ten-minute mark.

The two first teamed up on the upcoming Star Wars: Starfighter, and that experience left them looking for another project they could tackle together. Levy told People that their working relationship clicked quickly:

"This collaboration felt really good to both of us," Levy told People. "Trust developed. We found we brought each other to better work because of each other. So after we wrapped, we just started talking about what else we might do together."

One of those conversations turned to Ghost Rider, a Marvel character Gosling has wanted to play for years. This wasn’t simply Gosling throwing out the character’s name and saying it might be cool to light his head on fire. He had an actual take on the material, and it immediately grabbed Levy.

"Literally six minutes into him telling me about it, I’m like, 'Yeah, let's go. We're doing that,'" Levy recalled. "We walked it into Kevin [Feige] and here we are.".

Gosling will now officially lead Marvel Studios’ Ghost Rider movie, which is scheduled to hit theaters on July 28, 2028. The project was announced at San Diego Comic-Con 2026, where Gosling took the stage alongside Levy and Kevin Feige to confirm that the Spirit of Vengeance is finally riding into the MCU.

This wasn’t Marvel approaching Gosling with a ready-made Ghost Rider movie. Feige said the project came directly from the actor and his love for the comics.

"I am going to let Ryan reveal what he wants to reveal, when he wants to reveal it, and what he wanted to reveal today is: he's playing Ghost Rider. He is a huge fan of the comics; he did come to us particularly with a specific vision, based on some particular comics, but I'll let him unveil that as he wants to."

Gosling has apparently spent years thinking about Ghost Rider and arrived at Marvel Studios with a specific comic book-inspired direction for the character.

Exactly which comics are influencing Ghost Rider remains a mystery, and Feige clearly wants Gosling to reveal those details himself when he’s ready. There’s also plenty we still don’t know about what version of the character or mythology the film will explore.

Ghost Rider is one of those Marvel characters who gives filmmakers permission to get weird, dark, supernatural, and completely insane, so there’s a lot of room for Gosling and Levy to have some fun with it.

We’ll find out what Gosling has cooking when Ghost Rider rides into theaters on July 28, 2028.