Look who’s back from director jail. After the low-expectation failures of “Crank: High Voltage” and “Gamer” and a firing from the directors’ slot on “Jonah Hex,” gonzo bad taste exploitation-heads Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor are in early negotiations to helm “Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance.” Nicolas Cage, who helped the original gross $115 million in America and almost as much internationally, is also in early negotiations to return as the Satanic biker antihero.
This slows the doomsday clock over at Sony, who apparently were freaking out about losing this precious property. With a November 14th deadline looming to get a sequel into production or risk the rights reverting back to Marvel, Sony doesn’t want to the lose the opportunity to make a sequel since the first film was a bonafide hit. As a result, somehow Sony struck before Disney in 2010’s great Race To Nic Cage, where the notoriously unchoosy actor was weighing spending the fall on “Ghost Rider 2” or “National Treasure III.” Once Sony threatened to recast, Cage had to defend the honor of that particularly elaborate Johnny Blaze hairpiece.
The studio is keeping the plot under wraps but the “story” is apparently based on an old draft David Goyer penned when “GR” was set up at New Line Cinema in the early ’90s, which had an R-rated horror slant. As of recently, Goyer claims it takes place eight years after the original, working as a standalone not heavily reliant on continuity. Scott Gimple and Seth Hoffman of “Flashforward” have also reportedly worked on this screenplay, but it’s expected Neveldine and Taylor will take a stab at a draft as well.
As for that duo, we appreciate the Michael Bay-meets-John Waters aesthetic on paper, but this doesn’t seem like the type of gig conducive to their strap-the-camera-to-the-back-of-a-moving-van mentality. Still, we appreciate guys like them, willing to try anything for a transgressive, sick thrill, invading the sandbox of studio filmmaking. And to match them with the notoriously insane Nicolas Cage? Fans of the “Crank” films know how Neveldine/Taylor got Jason Statham to go far and beyond the call of duty, so the idea of Cage finding kindred spirits in these two excites us, even if he spends half the movie as a heavily-CGI flaming skull.