If there’s anything we enjoy more than a juicy casting rumour, it’s a juicy casting rumour involving one of Hollywood’s all-time favourite nice guys, Keanu Reeves. Way back in January this year, we took a look at rumours that Warner Bros. was thinking about bringing Keanu back to play John Constantine in a sequel to his 2005 version of the DC character, and if a recent Instagram post by Keanu’s co-star Peter Stormare is true, it would seem that we may right about that one.
Now we’re back again, looking into more recent web gossip over on the Marvel side of the fence, that they may potentially be looking at Keanu to tackle a Ghost Rider reboot for the ever-growing Marvel Cinematic Universe. So, in order to try and separate fact from fiction, we dragged the trusty old Supanova Scuttlebutt-o-meter©®™ (patent pending) out of the garden shed once more and put it to the task of looking into these latest Keanu rumours.
So, what’s the goss?
Talk on the net would have it that Kevin Feige and the folks over at Marvel Studios have been trying to lure Keanu across to the MCU for quite some time now, and most recently rumours have sprung up that he was potentially being courted to play either Marc Spector a.k.a. Moon Knight or Johnny Blaze a.k.a. Ghost Rider.
Following the release of those unsubstantiated reports, other outlets began to suggest that Star Wars’ Oscar Isaac was in talks to tackle the role of Spector in the upcoming Disney+ Moon Knight series, leaving the remaining potential role of Johnny Blaze as the leading pick for Keanu’s own MCU debut.
Where did all this come from?
First of all, Kevin Feige himself has been more than vocal in the past about him wanting to come across and join the MCU. In a 2019 interview, he compared Reeves to Jake Gyllenhaal, who they also talked to multiple times before finally signing him on to play Mysterio in Spider-Man: Far from Home. According to Feige himself, Marvel Studios talk to Keanu “for almost every film we make… I don’t know when, if, or ever he’ll join the MCU, but we very much want to figure out the right way to do it”.
According to currently unsubstantiated reports, Feige finally may have found that right way in a fresh MCU reboot of Johnny Blaze’s Ghost Rider, who was first brought to the big screen by Nicolas Cage in 2007, and followed up with the sequel Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance in 2011.
Backing up the possibility that we’re in for a Ghost Rider reboot, earlier rumours that began to surface in 2019 that Marvel was potentially looking to work toward a Midnight Sons team-up film, which would eventually bring together the supernatural Marvel characters of Ghost Rider, Moon Knight, Doctor Strange and Blade.
Other evidence that a potential big-screen Ghost Rider reboot was on the way came directly from the lips of actor Gabriel Luna, who played the Robbie Reyes version of the character on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and was originally set to begin work on his own spinoff series before its cancellation. When he was pressed by fans as to whether he would ever appear in a movie version of the character, he suggested that he would have liked The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus to tackle the role of Johnny Blaze on the big screen – a casting choice that Reedus himself had said would be “fun” to play. Since then, Reedus had been one of the top fan picks, until earlier this year when the rumours focusing on Keanu began to enter the mix.
So what’s the verdict?
At the moment, like so many other internet rumours that seem to catch alight and burn their way through social media, there’s no official confirmation that a Ghost Rider reboot is actually happening, let alone that they’re looking to sign Keanu on for the role. Of course, given the MCU’s ever growing repertoire and ambitious plans, it is entirely possible that they may have something quietly bubbling away in the background. And, as Feige himself has admitted, they are keen to get Keanu into the MCU one way or another.
So with all this in mind, what’s the likelihood we’ll see Keanu Reeves’ head catch on fire as he plays Ghost Rider? Well after the Supanova Scuttlebutt-o-meter©®™ (patent pending) gave us its best penance stare, it spat out a 38.35% likelihood.
As such it is probably best to declare this rumour as: POSSIBLE, BUT DON’T START COUNTING YOUR CHICKENS JUST YET.
