Ryan Gosling Pitched His Own ‘Ghost Rider’ Movie to Marvel as Studio Slows Down Output to Restore Quality: ‘When Quantity Is So Much, You Get Spread Thin’

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- Marvel Studios unveiled "Black Panther 3"—featuring David Jonnson as T'Challa II/Toussaint—and a Ryan Gosling-led "Ghost Rider" as its only announced 2028 releases at Comic-Con, per the source.
- Kevin Feige told Empire the sparser calendar is deliberate, saying the studio "didn't want to be spread thin" and is explicitly course-correcting toward quality after its streaming-era missteps.
- Marvel will deliver just four total MCU entries across the next two years—including the Disney+ series "VisionQuest" in October—down from six projects in 2023 alone.
- Ryan Gosling personally pitched the Ghost Rider concept to director Shawn Levy, who then brought the idea to Marvel; the pair previously collaborated on the upcoming "Star Wars: Starfighter."
- Former Disney CEO Bob Iger said Marvel's push into streaming "diluted focus and attention" and was the principal cause of its disappointing 2023–2024 critical and commercial run.
- Avengers: Secret Wars stands as the only Marvel theatrical release slated for 2027, while a new standalone "X-Men" movie is in development but went without a release date at Comic-Con.
Why it matters: The release count drop—from six Marvel projects in 2023 to just four MCU entries over the next two years—backs Feige's quality-over-quantity pivot with hard scheduling discipline, and awarding a 2028 slot to a project Gosling personally pitched hands A-list auteur energy the keys to the franchise's reset after the Disney+ dilution period.




