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’

Marvel’s buzzy Comic-Con presentation put two huge comic book movie tentpoles on the studio’s 2028 release calendar: “Black Panther 3,” featuring the debut of David Jonnson as T’Challa II/Toussaint, and “Ghost Rider,” starring Ryan Gosling in the title role. The announcement means “Spider-Man: Brand New day,” “Avengers: Doomsday” and “Avengers: Secret Wars” will be the only Marvel movies released in theaters between now and 2028. In fact, “Secret Wars” is the only 2027 Marvel movie release.

“A lot of it is a strategy we’ve talked about for a while, of focusing on quality,” Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige told Empire magazine at Comic-Con about the sparser release calendar. “We always try to focus on quality, but when quantity is so much, you get spread thin. We didn’t want to be spread thin, and the Avengers is as important as it comes. And ‘Secret Wars’… is a setup in and of itself to the future, to what’s next. So really, it was landing those two movies and setting up 2028, of which we’ve revealed two of them so far, ‘Ghost Rider’ and ‘Panther III.'”

With the television series “VisionQuest” arriving on Disney+ in October, the Marvel Cinematic Universe will be getting a total of four new entries across two years. That’s a massive slow down from the exhaustive output Marvel previously delivered across theaters and streaming. There were six Marvel movie and TV projects in 2023 alone, for instance. Feige previously admitted to Variety that Marvel’s “over-expansion” into Disney+ streaming content was the start of “quantity trumping quality” at the studio, which he now seems to be actively course-correcting.

Disney’s former CEO Bob Iger also cited Marvel’s push into streaming as a reason for its disappointing critical and commercial run across 2023 and 2024, explaining: “They had not been in the TV business at any significant level. Not only did they increase their movie output, but they ended up making a number of television series, and frankly, it diluted focus and attention. That is, I think, more of the cause than anything.”

Marvel is now slowing down its output in an attempt to restore its quality. While the studio is currently developing a new take on the X-Men, the standalone movie’s release date was not announced at Comic-Con. Feige told Empire that Gosling’s “Ghost Rider” movie moved ahead after “it was Gosling who had the vision. It was Gosling who had the pitch that won over Shawn, that had them come and pitch us this idea, which led to us on stage today.”

Shawn Levy is directing the “Ghost Rider” movie after working together with Gosling on the upcoming “Star Wars: Starfigher.” Disney owns both the Marvel and Star Wars franchises.