Is Ghost Rider 3 With Nicolas Cage Happening, Or Has This Superhero Series Flamed Out?

The world of Marvel films made prior to the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a wild west of under-appreciated massive swings from auteurs, esteemed tentpoles that dared to take superheroes as seriously as the comics that birthed them, and piles of rubbish that are probably better swept under a rug and never spoken of again. 2007's "Ghost Rider," directed by Mark Steven Johnson, is far from the lowest of the low, instead falling into the same middle ground as other mediocre Marvel superhero flicks from this era. If it wasn't for Nicolas Cage hamming it up as the maverick stunt-motorcyclist turned flame-headed bounty hunter of the damned Johnny Blaze, the movie would probably blur together with Johnson's "Daredevil."

That's absolutely not the case with "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance," the 2012 sequel helmed by "Crank" and "Gamer" duo Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. It's not a good movie (unless watching Idris Elba channel Pepé Le Pew as an alcoholic French monk is your thing), but it is a memorable one that comes at you with the enthusiasm of someone with big "Hold my beer" energy. It was also a reasonable success at the box office, taking home $149 million against a relatively modest $57 million budget. Around the time of its release, Neveldine confirmed to IndieWire that "talk" of "Ghost Rider 3" had already begun. "I know Nic[olas Cage] wants to do it, he's very pumped about it. We'll just [have] to see how well [this] does," he added.

Over a decade later, however, the Johnny Blaze character is now firmly in Cage's rearview mirror, with "Ghost Rider 3" having fallen into the depths of hell like Mephistopheles/Roarke being hurled back home at the end of "Spirit of Vengeance." What happened? Well, it all had to do with the franchise rights.

I don't need to tell anyone that 2012 was a game-changer for superhero cinema. Propelled by the billion-dollar success of "The Avengers," that year saw the MCU evolve from promising upstart to the biggest franchise on the planet. Marvel Studios' competitors would then proceed to spend the remainder of the decade chasing after them, with Sony scrambling to reconfigure its 2012 "Spider-Man" reboot, "The Amazing Spider-Man," as the springboard for a separate universe composed of spinoffs and sequels. That also meant a moderately lucrative franchise like "Ghost Rider" was suddenly small potatoes for the studio, which is why Sony allowed the rights to revert to Marvel Studios in 2013.

Rather than continue the adventures of Cage's Johnny Blaze or recast the role, Marvel Studios elected to focus on Robbie Reyes, a different iteration of Ghost Rider who debuted on the pages of "All-New Ghost Rider" #1 in 2014. Gabriel Luna would go on to play the character in Marvel Television's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." season 4 in 2016, quickly becoming a fan-favorite and almost starring in his own spinoff series. Of course, that was before Marvel Television was folded into Marvel Studios in 2019, at which point the spinoff was canceled along with several other MCU-adjacent projects that were percolating under Marvel's TV division at the time. Since then, it's been radio silence on the "Ghost Rider" front, so far as what the House of Ideas has in mind for the future (if anything).

Knowing the writing was on the wall for his rendition of Johnny Blaze, Cage casually announced that he wouldn't be starring in "Ghost Rider 3" around the time the rights reverted to Marvel Studios, telling Collider another "Ghost Rider" movie was "possible, but it won't be with me." Notably, "Spirit of Vengeance" was the last live-action film Cage would make with a major studio for the next 10 years. This would also mark the beginning of his notorious direct-to-video phase after his expensive lifestyle caught up with him (that and, as Cage would eventually reveal, to prevent his mother from being committed to a mental institution). It was only later that his recent career resurgence began thanks to films like "Mandy" and "Pig."

With Cage having since made his return to major live-action studio productions with "Renfield," it's not impossible he would be willing to reprise Johnny Blaze in some capacity. Ultimately, though, nobody seems especially nostalgic for the actor's run playing the character (not on a large scale, anyway). That makes it unlikely he'll be called upon to reprise the role in anything other than, say, "Deadpool 3," which will reportedly include jokey cameos from Marvel movies past in a sendup of the superhero multiverse trend (one that's already seen Cage "reprise" his version of the Superman who never was from Tim Burton's unmade "Superman Lives" in "The Flash").

So beware, all you "Ghost Rider" fans out there: If you hear something scraping at the door, it's definitely not a proper threequel featuring Cage.