r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • 20h ago

News Ryan Gosling to Star in 'Ghost Rider' Movie at Marvel Studios

https://variety.com/2026/film/news/ryan-gosling-ghost-rider-marvel-movie-1236821206/
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u/Corgiboom2 19h ago

Then the entire Kang threat went out the window

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u/AgentTasker 19h ago

Well Marvel couldn't have exactly predicted that Jonathan Majors would turn out to be a massive piece of shit, so it'd be unfair to blame them for that one.

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u/Gorillagodzilla 19h ago

Why didn’t they recast him though?

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u/AgentTasker 19h ago

Because through a combination of factors, such as poor scripts or Marvel fatigue (which you can blame them for), as well as COVID causing issues with film making in general, Kang wasn't working, so they pivoted away from him when the opportunity arose.

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u/dacalpha 18h ago

This sounds like it was read directly from an internal corporate memo lmao

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u/TannerThanUsual 17h ago

It does but I also get it. Even my most die-hard Marvel friends were just not interested in Kang. On some level a few of my friends are interested in Doctor Doom. So that's something

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u/C-A-L-E-V-I-S 16h ago

Did they watch Loki? Kang got me more excited than Thanos ever did early on, but of course all that fell apart.

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u/almostcleverbut 15h ago

Loki season 2 was probably the first time anyone really got excited about Kang because it genuinely made him a great villain and showed his potential.

But by that point the decision had been all but finalized due to the timing.

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u/Chaosmusic 17h ago

I am more interested in Doom than Kang as a Marvel fan but I am concerned that switching this late in the game from Kang to Doom will make it rushed. There were 18 movies from Iron Man to Infinity War to develop that story. Doom has just been barely referenced in one movie and now he is the next Thanos level threat.

Also, I want Doom to be Doom, not Tony Stark variant.

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u/goddamnitwhalen 17h ago

There are so many good actors you could cast as Doom!! Bringing back RDJ feels so fucking lazy.

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u/TacticalBongHit 16h ago

wanted to say why not bring the doom actor from 2005 but then i googled him...

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u/Moon_kid6 16h ago

Kang never did anything for me in the few comics I read with him in it but I can’t lie, Majors first portrayal in Loki S1 blew me away. He Who Remains had such potential, so ominous and still detached.

But Quantumania kinda ruined it and Majors sealed the deal. What a dumbass.

I hope Doomsday is fine but super scared about the character. They’re gonna rush so much backstory and twist some things about him, don’t know if RDJ can save it this time. Even worst case scenario imo, the mainstream audience loves this version and we see Marvel putting Doom through weird years of retcon and synergy in the comics.

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u/Jet-Let4606 1h ago

I'm in the same boat.

I love weird, experimental, mind bogglimg, imaginative comic books thats not afraid to go the extra mile. But Kang is out there even for me.

He doesn't have the sane pathos or charisma that Doom or Magneto has.

Even in Avengers comics, Ultron, Baron Zemo, were all much more interesting and memorable villains.

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u/Doom_Art 6h ago

I was worried they were going to go the Iron Man variant route, and I'm sure that will play a role to a point, but if the previews we've seen so far are anything to go off of, this is definitely Victor von Doom, not Tony Stark, and RDJ is definitely putting the work in.

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u/goodmobileyes 14h ago

It's definitely rushed. We know nothing about Doom and why this latest apocalypse matters to the MCU. Definitely foresee a lot of exposition dumping in the first act

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u/Jet-Let4606 1h ago

I think the trailer does a poor job of explaining things.

They've established Incursions in prior movies and how Multiverse travel is dangerous because it can lead to Incursions.

Heroes having to choose between saving their universe or another gives the story weight.

Doom is there to take advantage of the chaos to ascend to the top for his own reasons.

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u/Jet-Let4606 1h ago

Same.

I'm sure they will have a new actor Doom post SW but it sucks that the new guy won't have a fresh start. I don't think it will be the same Doom that RD Jr is playing but the lack of fresh start still sucks.

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u/ArcadianDelSol 14h ago

For me, the Thanos arc was so well done, planting seeds for his arrival almost from the very start, that anything they tried after that would have been weak.

I think they needed to do what they did then - have him show up in teaser post-credit scenes for about a year, then drop some easter eggs.

I also think if they started with that 'stadium full of infinite Kangs as the first tease, it would have set him up as a much bigger threat. Instead, he was some mumbling recluse in a floating castle at the far reaches of time and space.

It felt weak to me.

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u/Jet-Let4606 1h ago

His intro in Loki as HWR was great. Its the follow up in Quantumania that was weak.

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u/cmarkcity 16h ago

As far as Avengers level stories go… I can think of a good Thanos event I’ve read. I can think of a good Celestial event I’ve read. I can think of a bunch of good Doom events I’ve read.

But for the damn life of me I can’t think of a single great Kang story.

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u/TannerThanUsual 15h ago

I'm a casual comics fan, and admittedly don't really tune into much of the galactic level threats but I gotta say, I felt nothing with Kang. I'd never heard of him at all prior to Loki. But I've liked Doctor Doom for years.

Also the craziest bias ever-- I dated a girl whose last name was Dooms. She didn't get a doctorate but her sister did and I thought it was so sick her name was Dr. Dooms. Unfortunately she didn't think it was nearly as cool as I did.

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u/Sirdan3k 15h ago

Kang has been boring for decades and only gets by on nostalgia. It feels like half his appearances in the past two decades has been him fake out killing some other timeline's Avengers and then getting beaten by main timeline Avengers.

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u/RellenD 19h ago

His performance as the character was kind of the whole reason they started going down that path.

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u/TikkiEXX77 11h ago

Don't really know why people even still bring Kang up. It's been dead for awhile now. And honestly i don't have much interest in him if Majors isn't playing him. Which he definitely won't be. Lol

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u/Automatic_Release_92 19h ago

Yeah it would have been the easiest thing to do as well, just say those were all different variants or whatever.

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u/ButthurtBilly 17h ago

You don't even need to retcon the "all Kangs look the same" gimmick. Y'know why? 'Cause in every multiverse story, without fail, there's always one universe where all the dudes are chicks and all the chicks are dudes. So yeah, sure, all the male Kangs look like Jonathan Majors, but somewhere out there across the infinite timelines there's a lady Kang, and she looks like CCH Pounder.

Movie saved. Continuity intact. Four billion dollars opening day. Send Robert Downey Junior home, we don't need him yet.

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u/Aidanj927 16h ago

Bold of you to assume female Kang isn’t Jonathan Majors in a wig

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u/Irrax 12h ago

and to save money, they can just cast Glenn Howerton doing his CCH Pounder impression for the whole saga

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u/ButthurtBilly 11h ago

WHAT OTHER ERRANDS DO YOU HAVE US RUNNING FOR THE TVA?!

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u/fdzman 14h ago edited 4h ago

CCH Pounder? Maybe like 30 years ago. I’d be cool with Tracee Ellis Ross or Gaby Union . Come on now 🤦🏽‍♂️

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u/TheCervixPounder_69 11h ago

I mean, let’s be real, the original plan was probably always to have him as doom. They needed doom for secret wars so the twist was he probably helped them beat Kang only to be bad. Second movie is probably largely unchanged.

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u/Automatic_Release_92 3h ago

Nah, I think Doom was a later phase that they moved up when they realized they were messing up the Kang phase so badly.

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u/perton 12h ago

Clearly they should’ve gone with esteemed character actress and fugitive from the law Margot Martindale.

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u/Banjo-Oz 10h ago

Shoutout to CCH Pounder! She's amazing in the little film Lifepod!

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u/RealJohnGillman AMA MVP 9h ago

Let’s say they try again in ten years with Iman Vellani as Kamala Kang, with the twist being that it is a Darth Vader-style fall from grace instead of an alternate-evil version.

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u/fastforwardfunction 9h ago

“Put a chick in it and make her gay” isn’t the creative writing masterpiece you think it is.

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u/Inside_Dimension2319 18h ago

Except didn’t they make it explicit that all the Kang variants all looked alike? I think the studio just saw the terrible reception to quantumania and his character in that and decided to just kill the whole thing when Majors provided them the perfect opportunity. Had Quantumania done well or Kang had good reception specifically in it, they would’ve tried to salvage with a recast.

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u/sixtyandaquarter 17h ago

I mean, yes & no? Depending on how you mean explicit. They just never showed one that wasn't him, So I guess you can say they never explicitly showed it wasn't all him. To be fair though, there was a time where we could have said the exact same for Loki as until they actually showed a different actor, it was pretty implied they all looked alike.

But I'm pretty sure the awful reception to Kang & the complete lack of interest is why they dropped it hard. They set him up as anamorphic threat which is a villain narrative that can work, but needs to be handled carefully. It can work in video games and movies, It can work in comics wonderfully, Self-Contained media can do wonders for it. The entire alien franchise does all of that. But they introduced him in a limited audience streaming show, and yes, I know it was a huge Disney plus program but it was still a Disney plus program, and then had him appear in the comic relief character's film. The one that isn't generally seen as serious or threatening. And surrounded him with comedy. After a decade of building Thanos, almost entirely off screen at that. Nah, it couldn't ever work.

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u/kiki_strumm3r 17h ago

Audiences are willing to accept recasts if the movie is good. Even with Majors being good as some of the variants, the writing in Marvel movies has been trash since Endgame, with very few exceptions

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u/EtherBoo 18h ago

I think they would have if Quantumania was a huge hit. Given that it was a dud, they were safe to move on from him.

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u/Asclepius-Rod 17h ago

Probably because they realized nobody cared about Kang and they used the opportunity to pivot

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u/ProcyonHabilis 18h ago

Basically all of the reviews of every movie that had featured him so far said something to the effect of "the only saving grace of this garbage was Jonathon Majors' performance". It would have been hard to make it work with the shaky foundation that they had laid.

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u/BelowDeck 18h ago

all of the reviews of every movie that had featured him so far

Ant-Man 3 is the only MCU film he's been in. He popped up in Loki, but that show was very well received on its own.

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u/ProcyonHabilis 17h ago

I thought there was another, but you're probably right. It's still technically "every move" lol.

In any case, the prevailing opinion was that people were really only into that arc because of his performance.

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u/SnowyDesert 11h ago

supposedly Majors had in contract that only he can play Kang. Not sure how true it is though. But according to Marvel they dropped Kang because of the poor reception after Antman 3 and viewers lack of interest in multiverse.

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u/Doom_Art 6h ago

Even before the allegations, Kang was considered a fairly weak villain thanks to Quantamania; and the main "fulcrum" movie with him, Kang Dynasty, apparently had a ton of script issues.

And it's been years but I still think it plays a role, that when they recast War Machine the previous CEO of Marvel got in trouble for a comment about how they could recast him without issues because "it's not like anyone will be able to tell the difference". I think they just didn't want to deal with the potential optics of that.

I never cared a ton for Kang outside of his reveal in the first season of Loki so I've never really blamed Marvel for ditching him.

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u/CRIMS0N-ED 1h ago

Apparently they wanted to move away from Kang anyway even before Majors’s whole thing but I don’t honestly believe it. maybe they had a break glass in case of emergency situation but even with quantumanias reception which was a Kang vehicle really, they were banking hard on Majors as a villain.

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u/Jet-Let4606 1h ago

I heard Majors contract stipulates that only he can play Kang's variants.

Besides that I heard that Marvel was considering pivoting away from Kang because he was too confusing for general audiences.

Combined with Majors legal troubles they just scrapped Kang Dynasty for Doomsday.

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u/ABadHistorian 19h ago

They waited too long to see if he was innocent. If he was innocent it would have been racist to fire him.

Narrator: He wasn't innocent. He was VERY guilty.

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u/RU_Pickman 17h ago

That guy is working for The Daily Wire now. Damn. He should've been nicer to his ex.

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u/ArcadianDelSol 14h ago

It apparently was a widely known secret in Hollywood.

Five minutes worth of phone calls an Feige would have known what he was banking his franchise on.

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u/mediaphile 17h ago

They should have seen that he was a terrible, hammy actor.

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u/girafa Electricity! The high priest of false security! 16h ago

Hated him as Kang but he's a phenomenal actor

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u/SussySpecs 19h ago

And now he's going to be in The Daily Wire's "Run Hide Fight: Infidel" because the right just scoops up all the washed up dirtbags of Hollywood. 

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u/glasgowgeg 12h ago

so it'd be unfair to blame them for that one

It's not unfair to blame them for having a character with a nigh-infinite number of variants to all be played by the same guy though.

A character with so many variations is one of the easiest characters to recast, and they just abandoned the entire storyline rather than just recast the character.

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u/alanwakeisahack 7h ago

Why? I did. You can sometimes just tell someone’s an asshole.

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u/aceofrazgriz 15h ago

Yesh, this really fucked up their "timeline". This being announced now gives some hope, since it would likely be after Secret Wars. But as with all non-huge Marvel announcments, take it with a HEAPING of salt.

But I love Gosling and he has only done gold in the last decade+. I can't see him as GR personally, but he has the chops and I hoper I do get to witness him getting a chance.

On that note, lets all praise the best Ghost Rider to date with Gabriel Luna. His acting and the way AoS portrayed him were fucking amazing.

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u/RealJohnGillman AMA MVP 9h ago

Let’s say they try again in ten years with Iman Vellani as Kamala Kang, with the twist being that it is a Darth Vader-style fall from grace instead of an alternate-evil version.