Days before Marvel Studios took the Hall H stage, Kevin Feige was asked why Ryan Gosling had not been cast as Ghost Rider and why Cynthia Erivo had not been cast as Storm. He declined to shut either one down. One half of that answer has since resolved itself, which makes the other half considerably more interesting.
A Studied Non-Answer
The exchange came during Feige’s appearance on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, recorded as part of the press run for Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Horowitz laid out that Gosling has publicly said he wants the Ghost Rider role and Erivo has said she wants Storm, then asked the obvious follow up. Feige replied that “you never know what the future may bring,” adding that both are very good actors and both are great characters.
Feige has historically been comfortable shutting down casting rumors outright when they are wrong. This was conspicuously not that, and fans parsed it accordingly.
Half Of It Came True In A Week
On Saturday night in Hall H, Feige brought Gosling onto the stage to confirm him as Johnny Blaze in a Ghost Rider film directed by Shawn Levy, arriving in 2028. The podcast answer was recorded before that reveal, which means the man giving the coy non-denial already knew exactly what was coming.
That is worth holding onto, because it establishes how Feige uses the phrase. When he says you never know what the future may bring about a specific actor attached to a specific role, it is not necessarily a polite brush-off. In this instance it was a studio head sitting on a signed deal.
Which Leaves The Storm Question
Erivo’s situation is the more immediately live of the two, because Storm is a character Marvel will unquestionably need to cast. Halle Berry, who played the role across the original Fox X-Men films, is not appearing as Storm in Avengers: Doomsday, though she has said she would be open to returning to the character in some form. That leaves the part genuinely open heading into the studio’s planned X-Men reboot, which Feige has repeatedly framed as the centerpiece of the MCU’s next era.
Erivo has been vocal about wanting it, and the fan campaign around her has run for years alongside the Gosling one. The bulk of the Doomsday cast has now been confirmed with no announcement for the role, and the colliding-universes structure of Doomsday and Secret Wars gives Marvel enormous latitude over who turns up and for how long.
None of that makes it a done deal. But the Ghost Rider half of the same sentence went from a shrug to a Hall H announcement inside of a week, and that is a reasonable argument for taking the Storm half seriously. The same podcast conversation produced several other headlines, including Feige’s confirmation that Miles Morales is coming to the MCU. Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters December 18.
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