Already a hot commodity, Marvel characters got even hotter this month with the earth-shattering Disney announcement. To that end, any studio who still has their mitts on a Marvel property will never let that property go, and that means they have to be actively developing it.
The latest news from the Deal Memo blog at Variety is that Sony is revving up the sequel to 'Ghost Rider 2' in spite of the original movie's middling performance.
Filmmaker David S. Goyer is said to be in early talks to "create the story and supervise writers", which is a quirky new role in filmmaking that seems to have grown out of the comics-to-film movement. Nicolas Cage is on board to return to the role.
Former Marvel big-shot Avi Arad will produce along with Michael De Luca and Steven Paul. Gary Foster will serve as an executive producer.
Goyer, as fans may recall, penned several scripts for the first 'Ghost Rider', which was to be darker, R-Rated and more in the vein of Goyer's successful 'Blade' franchise. At some point the mandate from Marvel and Sony was to keep the show PG-13, and lighten it up for broader audiences. The result was the enjoyable but forgettable original directed by Mark Steven Johnson.
Odds are that the new move will be PG-13 too, but hopefully carry some of the scary elements that Goyer intended for the original.
The article also mentions numerous other Marvel properties that are still locked up by other studios. Most are well-known to fans: 'X-Men', 'Fantastic Four', 'Silver Surfer' and 'Daredevil' at Fox as well as 'Spider-Man' at Sony. One that rarely gets mentioned is 'Sub-Mariner', which is still submerged at Universal.
Also of note is the mention that Avi Arad, who is an independent producer these days, is actively developing the manga-based 'Ghost in the Shell' movie as well as the comic-strip based 'Popeye' as a CGI-animated movie.
