Crank Up the Flaming Cycle: Neveldine and Taylor to Direct Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance!

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If you loved the manic energy and subversive style of the Crank movies – and the dark satire of Gamer, for that matter – then you’ll love this: according to The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision blog, the co-directors of those films, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, are in talks to direct Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Nicholas Cage is in early talks to star in the sequel as well.

Although critically unappreciated, Ghost Rider took in $229 million, globally, so it would seem that Columbia Pictures believes that the lean [read relatively inexpensive], mean, twisted style of Neveldine and Taylor could result in a darker, faster, more profitable sequel.

As one of the twenty-six per cent of critics [as per rottentomatoes.com] who enjoyed Ghost Rider – which worked as a ghost story, a superhero movie, a western and a biker movie – I’d love to see what the gonzo duo could do with the character. They’ll be working from a story by David Goyer, but they’re writers, too, so it’s conceivable that they’d work on the script. That could result in a very different take on an already unique Marvel superhero.

According to Heat Vision, the studio wants Spirit of Vengeance to be in production by late fall, as their rights to the property were to have run out shortly.