Ghost Rider 2 in 2012

First I’ll give you the bad news.

In 2007 Nic Cage and Eva Mendes made a little Marvel Comics movie called Ghost Rider. The Boston globe called it “great stupid fun”. Well “as long as someone else is buying the tickets.” Ouch! Come on. Was it that bad? Well it was no Iron Man. That’s for sure.

And there’s going to be a sequel. In 3D. That’s called Spirit of Vengeance.

Are you done throwing up? That was the bad news. But there is some good news.

The script for Ghost Rider 2: Spirit of Vengeance, due out in 2012, is penned by none other than David S. Goyer, one of the finest writers in Hollywood if you want my opinion. He co-wrote ’05′s Batman Begins, is attributed the story behind ’08′s The Dark Knight, and has been working on the video game (which I can’t wait to buy) Call of Duty: Black Ops. If anyone can put the Ghost back in the Rider, its Goyer.

This was the statement from HotNews.com:

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vegeance, the sequel of Ghost Rider (2007), the action movie inspired from the Marvel comics will be shot starting this Fall in Romania, Marketing Manager at Castel Film, Bogdan Moncea declared for Hotnews.ro. The film produced by Columbia Pictures is the first big American production shot in Romania, after Cold Mountain in 2002. Ghost Rider 2 will also be the first 3D movie shot in Romania.

And yes, Nicolas Cage is returning to the role. Hey, he has his cool cred back thanks to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Kick-Ass (even his hair has been looking better lately).

“This story picks up eight years after the first film. You don’t have to have seen the first film. It doesn’t contradict anything that happened in the first film, but we’re pretending that our audience hasn’t seen the first film,” Cage said to MTV. “It’s as if you took that same character where things ended in the first film and then picked it up eight years later – he’s just in a much darker, existential place.”

Dark? As dark as the Merc with the Mouth? What do you think?

Cage will also appear in Drive Angry and The Hungry Rabbit Jumps.