Marvel Casts Ryan Gosling as Ghost Rider for 2028 Film: ‘A Character I’ve Wanted to Play for a Long Time’
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- Ryan Gosling was officially cast as Ghost Rider at Marvel's Comic-Con panel Saturday, a role Gosling said he had "wanted to play for a long time" and one Rolling Stone projected for him as far back as 2013.
- Kevin Feige announced the casting onstage, with Suicide's punk classic "Ghost Rider" playing as Gosling walked out; Ghost Rider was previously played by Nicolas Cage in two early-2000s films and by Gabriel Luna (as Robbie Reyes) on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
- Shawn Levy is directing the May 2028 film, re-teaming with Gosling after their upcoming Star Wars: Starfighter collaboration; Levy told Hall H: "Gosling is the absolute shit."
- Ryan Coogler also appeared at the panel to announce Black Panther 3 for 2028, casting David Jonsson (The Long Walk, Alien: Romulus) as T'Challa II — the son of the late Chadwick Boseman's T'Challa and Nakia, introduced in Wakanda Forever's final moments.
- Marvel closed its Comic-Con presentation with a new Avengers: Doomsday trailer shown exclusively in the hall, featuring Robert Downey Jr. alongside cast members from Fox's original X-Men films; the trailer has not been posted online.
Why it matters: Marvel locked in one of its most publicly lobbied-for casting wins for May 2028, pairing Gosling with Levy — a director-actor combo it's already grooming via Star Wars: Starfighter — while simultaneously resetting Black Panther with Jonsson and teasing Doomsday. The Ghost Rider slot, vacated since Cage's pre-MCU era, returns a supernatural corner of the franchise to the MCU on an explicit release-date commitment rather than vague Phase promises.
