Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance to release on 17th February in English, Hindi, Tamil & Telugu

GHOST RIDER™

SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE Production Information

Nicolas Cage reprises his role as Johnny Blaze in Ghost Rider™ Spirit of Vengeance. In this gritty new vision for the character, directed by Neveldine/Taylor (Crank), Johnny is still struggling with his curse as the devil’s bounty hunter – but he may risk everything as he teams up with the leader of a group of rebel monks (Idris Elba) to save a young boy from the devil… and possibly rid himself of his curse forever. Columbia Pictures and Hyde Park Entertainment present in association with Imagenation Abu Dhabi a Marvel Entertainment / Crystal Sky Pictures / Ashok Amritraj / Michael De Luca / Arad production, Ghost Rider™ Spirit of Vengeance. The film stars Nicolas Cage, Ciarán Hinds, Violante Placido, Johnny Whitworth, Christopher Lambert, and Idris Elba. Directed by Neveldine / Taylor. Produced by Steven Paul, Ashok Amritraj, Michael De Luca, Avi Arad, and Ari Arad. Screenplay by Scott M. Gimple & Seth Hoffman and David S. Goyer. Story by David S. Goyer. Based on the Marvel Comic. Executive Producers are E. Bennett Walsh, David S. Goyer, Stan Lee, and Mark Steven Johnson. Director of Photography is Brandon Trost. Production Designer is Kevin Phipps. Edited by Brian Berdan, A. C. E. Costume Designer is Bojana Nikitovic. Music by David Sardy.
The film will be released in select territories by Warner Bros. Pictures.   MARVEL, and all Marvel characters including the Ghost Rider character ™ & ©2012 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
ABOUT THE FILM Nicolas Cage is back as the Ghost Rider in a gritty new vision for the classic character, Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance. The film is directed by Neveldine/Taylor – also known as Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor – who have earned a cult following with their stylish and edgy films, including Crank and Gamer.   Taylor explains that the directors were excited to approach their new film for two major reasons. “We were thrilled to have the opportunity to direct a franchise film with Nicolas Cage, and, second, to work with this really cool, edgy, comic book series – I mean, this dude has a flaming skull and kicks major ass,” says Neveldine. “I think the studio wanted to do something edgier with this franchise, so our attitude and style of filmmaking fit perfectly with the tone they were hoping to see. We were all on the same page.”
With a free hand to give the film that edgy tone, the directors could let their imaginations run wild. “The only thing we knew we wanted to keep from the first film was Nick Cage. We wanted to change everything else – the way he looks, the way he dresses, the bike. We wanted souls to be burned and dragged to hell. And lucky for us, the studio said, ‘That’s great; that’s what we were hoping you’d say.’ And that became the start of our process. What we were really going for is a mood, a feeling, an aesthetic – to make him badass.”
That process continued all the way through production, as Neveldine and Taylor employ a kinetic style both in front of and behind the camera, as Cage explains. “The energy of making this film was a different experience,” says the actor. “It’s a much more wild, almost daredevil experience – even the way Mark Neveldine shoots. He’s like a stuntman, risking his life hundreds of times, hanging off of wires or shooting while skating on Rollerblades – he’s a very active, macho filmmaker. Fans are going to be blown away by the photography and Mark, Brian and (Director of Photography) Brandon Trost’s daredevil camerawork.”
Describing their intense set experience, Neveldine says, “At the end of the day, we have to get the performance and the shots, and we’ll get them any way we can. You’ll see us hanging off of cars and shooting on Rollerblades to push the cinematic envelope.”
Where other directors might choose to create the Ghost Rider’s world inside a computer, Neveldine/Taylor capture as much as they can practically. “We use real stunt guys and real motorcycle action – though we did set the guy’s head on fire in the computer afterwards,” says Taylor. “We think it makes for a better, more visceral experience for the viewer if they’re seeing something real.”
Editor Brian Berdan, who worked with the directors on Crank, says, “They are so creative; it’s all hand-held and intuitive and not totally planned out. That liveliness of a hand-held camera and someone with the sense of what to do with it makes it all really come to life. It can be a challenge to edit, because you get a ton of footage – some of which makes you initially think, ‘I can’t do anything with this,’ and then the camera will come in at just the right point and you grab exactly what you need!”
Idris Elba was impressed by the directors. “They managed to catch everything, paying attention to detail and performance and background. They’re a very courageous set of filmmakers. You can see that they’re having fun, but you also feel that they know what they want. They’re really full-on fellas. When I saw Mark break out the Rollerblades – and I’m on a motorcycle on a motorway in Romania (and I can hardly ride, I just learned) – I’m like, ‘This dude is nuts, but, hey, let’s go for it!’”
It’s a style that Cage relishes. “They have this gonzo energy, this wild intensity – they’re both really up for anything. I think I fit into that, too.”
“We were excited for our tone and dark humor to leak into the project,” says Neveldine. “At the same time, it was important to keep it grounded and hard-hitting.”
Neveldine/Taylor’s extreme filmmaking required a story that broke new ground as well. It wouldn’t do to simply pick up where the last film left off. “This story takes place years later, when Blaze – and the Ghost Rider – are in an entirely different place,” says producer Ari Arad. “Johnny Blaze is now miles away from his place of birth, trying to run away from the demon inside him. In comes a priest, Moreau, played by Idris Elba, who promises to help Johnny – if Johnny can help find a certain boy. If Johnny can find the boy and save the child’s soul, he might be able to save his own soul as well.”
Some ideas for the new film started while Cage was promoting the first film. “I was in England, doing a junket for the film, dressed in leather from head to toe, and I decided I’d go to Westminster Abbey on my lunch break,” he remembers. “I had no idea that I was walking into an environmental summit with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the head of the Greek Orthodox Church. I snuck in, and they sat me in the back, when a bishop from Colorado sees me and invites me up front. He introduces me to the Archbishop, who says, ‘Let me give you a tour of Westminster Abbey.’ We’re walking around, and he sees how I’m dressed, and he says, ‘Oh, and by the way, I can be naughty, too.’ Well, that was the beginning of it, for me – that John and the Ghost Rider would somehow be working with the church, that the church would need him in some way.”
For Cage, approaching Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance was “like starting from scratch in many ways. It’s a whole new John Blaze – by now he’s been living for a while with the Rider. In the original film he was always trying to calm down – by avoiding alcohol, listening to Karen Carpenter… stuff that wouldn’t make his head ignite. It’s now years later; his head has ignited and he has to live with that. So it’s an entirely different Johnny hiding out in Romania.”
“Nick is a brilliant actor and a gentleman,” says Neveldine. “He always puts the film first and we were humbled by his commitment. He brought ideas to the set every day that pushed us to be better filmmakers. He also embraced our style and enjoyed how we work. That made us feel good and kept us on our toes. It made coming to work every day a complete pleasure.”
“Nick seems like a lunatic when you see him in movies, but he’s super-cerebral in his approach to acting,” says Taylor. “Everything he does is really well thought-out – there’s a method to the madness. That’s why his performances are so interesting – he’s not just acting crazy. And that extends to a project like this one – it’s a guy with his head on fire on a motorcycle, but we got really deep into the mythology. Not only did we construct a new arc for Blaze, we wanted to explore who the demon is, what his story is, what makes the Ghost Rider the way he is.”
Cage’s co-stars were also impressed with the actor’s range and commitment. “He’s just one of the funniest and most gracious actors I’ve worked with,” says Idris Elba. “You know, he’s obviously a huge superstar, but when you meet him, you know, he’s very much down-to-earth. Happy to work. Happy to rehearse. Happy to do it again and again. He’s a good guy.”
Cage notes that just as the Ghost Rider has a new look in this film, so does Johnny Blaze. “The look is a lot more rugged. The jacket is more fitted and you don’t have spikes coming out of it. It’s less heavy metal,” says the actor. “When Blaze, wearing a tight-fitted traditional racing jacket with leather pants, morphs into the Ghost Rider, it’s a more organic and alive look. Something I talked about with Brian was how it starts to become hot, black, oozing and bubbling.”
Costume Designer Bojana Nikitovic adds, “Brian and Mark didn’t want it to be stylized; they wanted things to look real – like you wouldn’t even notice the costumes. Almost every principal character has only one costume – these are characters that really live in their clothes, so their costumes become their skin, especially Johnny Blaze and Moreau. Everything has to be worn out.”
John Blaze is not the only role that Cage plays in the film; he also plays the Ghost Rider for the first time. (In the 2007 film, the Rider was played by a number of stunt performers, whose faces were replaced by the famous flaming skull.) “Brian Taylor really wanted to get into the feeling of the sacrifice – always recalling the pain of the actual initial deal with the Devil,” says Cage. “So, he was a huge advocate that I should play not just John Blaze, but the Ghost Rider as well. It was important to Brian that I inhabit the spirit, Zarathos – he is the corrupted and fallen spirit of justice who became a spirit of vengeance. That opened up all sorts of new doors for me. I’d played multiple roles in movies in the past, like Adaptation, but this time, I was dealing with a character that was not human. How could I bring that to life? It was exciting to me – and let’s face it, the movie’s called Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance, it’s not called John Blaze. The Ghost Rider is the star of the movie.”
“We thought it was a great opportunity – you have Nick Cage, this unbelievable actor, and you can have him play the dual role of Johnny Blaze and Ghost Rider,” says Neveldine. “I think he loved getting in there and playing this dark soul, dealing with the addiction of this demon inside of him.”
“We really did approach it as a dual role – Ghost Rider is not Johnny Blaze,” says Taylor. “Johnny has been taken over by the demon, Zarathos. It’s something else completely. So Nick had to imagine, what does that demon look like when he’s in hell? Now he’s inhabiting a human body – what does that look like? How does he walk? How does he move?”
In their re-creating the character for the new film, Cage and the directors worked on how they would portray the demonic spirit. “Brian and I thought that he was like an ancient pharaoh; he has a regal quality about him, and he’s not something you can relate to,” says Cage. “And I also thought about animals that I could draw on; I had two pet cobras at one time in my life, and I would watch them move and what they would do when they turned their back to me. If you look at the back of a cobra, there’s a pattern on it that almost looks like an occult eye. They would start dancing and then turn and just lunge and bare their fangs. That became a motif for Ghost Rider, that sort of hypnotic movement to try to put you to sleep and then attack. Those were some of the little ways of trying to create an entity that would be unlike anything you’d seen before that would, hopefully, scare and entertain you at the same time.”
While audiences would never see Cage’s face when playing the Ghost Rider in the finished film, the actor nonetheless arrived on set in makeup of his own design that created a skull-like look and incorporated contact lenses that blacked out the entirety of his eyes.
But why create such an elaborate make-up, when Cage’s head was set to be replaced by CG a flaming skull? For Cage, the reason is simple: to find the character and to assist his fellow actors in their reactions to him. “Ghost Rider, to me, is a fallen angel,” continues the actor. “Since he’s not anything you can relate to it was important to me that there be some distance and some fear present when playing that part. When you work from the outside in, it sometimes helps you channel or believe or commit to a character that hopefully not only stimulates my imagination but my fellow actors as well – they know that there’s something else in the room now and it’s not John Blaze, it’s a whole other being.”
Violante Placido (The American) says that all of the actors are adept and practiced at using their imaginations to picture what the computer will put on the screen… but nothing takes the place of the real thing. “It made a real difference when Nick put on his makeup and wore these dark contact lenses,” she says. “The makeup made him so different, like an insect or like a snake with its black impenetrable eyes. Two black holes which hypnotize, horrify you at the same time.”
“At the end of the film,” says Ciarán Hinds, “he roars up on his bike and I’m trying to crawl as much as I can in any direction. When I turned and saw this extraordinary makeup that he’s done, his face just came straight into mine and became otherworldly – he’d gone somewhere with this powerful, powerful energy.”
Idris Elba leads a group of European actors and rising stars opposite Cage. Elba plays Moreau, “a religious man who has gone on his own path –a Lone Ranger type character,” he says. “When you meet him, he’s in the midst of a journey, searching for Nadya and Danny, and has been for a while. He’s traveled around the world, lived in many different places. When I met Mark and Brian, we discussed that the character has to have a feeling of ‘been there, done that.’ Even though he’s a monk, he likes a little bit of a drink. And he has a motorcycle and cool threads – he goes for it.”
Director Mark Neveldine predicts, “Idris has a tremendous physical presence and physical skills matching the great action stars of the past 20 years. I love his take on Moreau, his energy and charisma. He has a never-say-never attitude, loves doing his own stunts and he’s one of the best-looking guys in the business. A true tough guy who has the talent of twelve actors, and by the way, so much fun to work with.”
“First of all, I like him as a person – he’s somebody I enjoy talking with and, as an actor, he’s brave,” says Cage. “Idris is not afraid to be big, to give his character Moreau size. There’s a kind of enchanting madness in his eyes and this wonderful kind of crazy laugh he does every now and then. “
As he did for his memorable role in Thor, Elba chose to wear special contact lenses that would lighten his eye color. “The character was described as a man who has a light in his eyes – which I interpreted as a light coming from his eyes,” he describes. “So I said to Mark and Brian, ‘Hey, why don’t we change his eye color? Why don’t we make it a little bit more ambiguous as to what’s going on with those eyes, you know?” He’s not a superhero, he’s not mystical – he’s real – but I wanted him to look like he might be other-worldly here and there. And they loved the idea.”
“The moment he put those on, it was the icing on the cake for Moreau,” says Neveldine. “It was this spiritual power, beaming through those eyeballs. We needed that – he’s not just a drunk monk, he’s a drunk monk with a powerful stare, and he’ll need that when he’s up against the Ghost Rider.”
Ciarán Hinds plays a character named Roarke, but let’s not kid ourselves. “There’s no way you can mince words, Roarke is the Devil,” says Ciarán Hinds, “and he’s not looking for redemption. He’s inhabited the body of a human being; unfortunately, human beings, being what they are, are weak and fallible, so the body’s starting to disintegrate. Since he has spawned a Devil child, a young boy, he has a back-up plan, but it becomes a race against time, because not only does he have to secure the boy by a certain moment, as he progresses on his journey he starts to disintegrate. After a while, it looks like his whole face is just sliding off him.”
Strangely enough, this is not Hinds’ first time playing the Devil. “A few years ago, Connor McPherson, a well-known Irish theatre writer-director, asked me to be in a play [“The Seafarer”] that he’d written and was directing on Broadway. The character was called Mr. Lockhart – and he turned out to be The Devil. I’m not sure what it is about my choices as an actor that leads to me being cast as the Devil, but it’s fun to be evil.”
“Ciarán Hinds is the nicest guy in the world – a very gentle soul – but I’m sure the Devil is the nicest guy in the world, too,” says Cage. “He’s worked all that charm into his portrayal. There’s a great sense of fun with him, as well.”
Director Mark Neveldine calls Hinds “a total pro. He's fascinating to watch and he brings so much life to the character with so much ease. We were always excited when he stepped on set. He is a tireless actor who never ever complains and can do a perfect take 20 times in a row. Like Nic, he is one of the great actors of our time.”
Describing his character’s look, Hinds jokes that “contrary to popular opinion, the Devil doesn’t wear Prada. The Devil wears Brioni. Bojana was very good about delicately sizing up the character – a man carrying himself with what he believes is old school dignity and pride. He is trying to keep it all together, but he’s falling apart. He looks impeccable, but meanwhile the body’s disintegrating.”
Costume Designer Bojana Nikitovic continues, “Brian and Mark gave the right instructions to not make the typical version of devil, so we knew that he needed to be a really immaculately dressed, elegant guy. And Ciarán Hinds absolutely helped by how he wears the costume and the way he carries that character.”
And it’s not only the wardrobe that makes the man—to play Roarke, Hinds also wore makeup and prosthetics. “It’s truly creative, fantastic work,” the actor marvels. “You need a little Zen and a lot of patience because it’s a two-hour job – hair, makeup, lenses. Most of it is prosthetics work that is blended and sealed into the skin on the side of the face and along the nose. I watch how it progresses bit by bit and, at the end, half my face is not what it was when I sat down on the chair.”
Violante Placido takes on the role of Nadya, who forms a bond with Johnny when a secret sect of the church recruits him for to help her son. “She has led a tough life, on the streets, and that has made her tough,” says Placido. “I imagine her like a stray cat. She knows how to use guns and knives – she’s ready to kill if necessary. Her biggest sin is her son, Danny; it’s a paradox, because he’s also her only reason to live. Her mission in this movie is to protect her son and maybe redeem herself, start a new life.”
“Nadya is crazy – she’s cheated, stolen, probably killed. But at the end of the day she wants to be a mom; she wants to take care of her son,” says Neveldine. “Violante puts that front-and-center; you feel that she is putting the role of being a mother first, and she makes the character redeemable.”
Cage observes, “There’s a tragic mystery to Violante’s performance as Nadya that’s right for the role. She is a gypsy vagabond who fell in with the wrong crowds and now feels really heartbroken for this child – she’s concerned for his future and feels guilty. And that all comes out in her eyes. Violante’s one of those actors who is so mysterious because you don’t know what she’s thinking; it’s all very fluid and effortless.”
Nadya has a mysterious, unconventional beauty. “I really like the look that she ended up having – and there was a lot of Brian in the procedure,” notes Placido. “We decided for a dark, punk rock look. She has these dark eyes. It’s like a protection that she uses – a makeup that she can make herself. It’s not really glamorous and it accomplishes two things – it makes her appear melancholy, even desperate, and, at the same time, tough. It’s a kind of cat look.”
“It is unclear whether she’s a Gypsy, but she’s living her life that kind of way,” observes Costume Designer Bojana Nikitovic. “When you dress a beautiful woman, it’s good to see the curves and a little bit of skin, so the search for the right costume was not helped by the fact that the story takes place in wintertime. To protect Violante from the cold, we found a jacket that we liked, then we played with colors. We definitely wanted color on her because other characters are almost monochrome, like black, gray. After trying a number of possibilities we found this red that we loved very much.”
Johnny Whitworth takes on the role of Carrigan – Nadya’s ex-boyfriend and a character who transforms into the malevolent Blackout. “He’s a sociopath – definitely a bad guy,” Whitworth explains. “Roarke hires him to track down Nadya, because he wants the child. But the Ghost Rider has been hired by the good guys to do the same thing. An ordinary guy can’t go up against the Ghost Rider, so when he almost bites the dust, he finds himself turned into Blackout – and now, he’s on the same supernatural level as the Ghost Rider, this other Devil creation.”
Whitworth had worked with Neveldine/Taylor before, in their film Gamer as well as Pathology, which Neveldine/Taylor wrote. “They have such different voices, but they complement each other,” he says. “Sometimes they’ll give you different direction, but when that happens you realize that they are giving you two avenues to the same destination.”
“Johnny is the type of actor that we’d have for one or two scenes and he’d steal the show,” says Taylor. “So we figured this was the time to give him a chance to really blow it up. He’s an unpredictable actor, playing a really good bad guy, a dark soul of a man. For the comic book fans out there, I think they’re going to find that he’s true to the spirit of Blackout, and for the people who aren’t, they’ll find he’s just really cool.”
To make the character that cool required extensive makeup and prosthetic work. “The standard was really high on the makeup, because we had to make sure that Blackout and the Ghost Rider, which would obviously be CG, felt like they existed in the same world,” says Taylor. “I think the end result was that our people just knocked it out of the park.”
For Whitworth, completing the transition from handsome actor to devil creation took four hours. “It was a painstaking process, but definitely worth it,” says the actor.
Christopher Lambert plays the pivotal character Methodius, the leader of the sophisticated if monastic sect to whom Moreau struggles to bring Danny, Nadya and Blaze for what they all believe will be the boy’s safe keeping.
“It’s great to have someone like Christopher – with a legacy like his – in this film,” observes Idris Elba.
But Methodius’ conception of what will make the world safe in terms of Danny’s fate is shockingly different from the boy’s friends and mother’s. “It’s impossible to say if he’s a good guy or a bad guy. He’s just a guy with a conviction and he’s going to go forward with this conviction,” notes Lambert.
But playing a man of faith who is quite prepared to execute a young boy was not the actor’s greatest challenge – that involved coming to terms with how the directors envisioned that would Methodius look. “When Mark and Brian asked me if I wouldn’t mind shaving my head and having my face covered in tattoos, I was really scared. I didn’t know how I’d look with my head shaven – I tried unsuccessfully to convince them to let me do it with a bald cap. Ultimately, I shaved it gradually. I didn’t have long hair, but I had enough that I wanted to go step by step. I started to cut it really short, then shorter, then shorter and, to my amazement, I really liked it. I’m going to grow it back a little, but I’m going to keep it very short because first of all, it’s very practical and, secondly, I feel good about its pleasant feel. I was going to say ‘the wind in your hair,’ but the wind on your skull is pretty nice.”
The tattooing process designed by special effects makeup artist Jason Robert Hamer was, as described by Lambert, “pretty simple. Fortunately, the tattoos stay on; I can sleep with the makeup. The day before shooting, we do half my face and my skull and then, the morning of the shoot, we do the rest. All together, it’s about a two-and-a-half-hour process, and it takes more time to take off than to put on. “
The then-thirteen-year-old actor Fergus Riordan rounds out the principal cast in the pivotal role of Danny. “Unfortunately, he’s the son of the Devil,” says Riordan. “His mom made a pact with the Devil to host his child. So he runs away from good guys and the bad guys; in fact, he’s not really sure who is good and who is bad. Ultimately, he has to decide between good and evil.”
“We were very lucky to find Fergus,” agrees Executive Producer E. Bennett Walsh. “We were getting ready to do this complete European search for ten-year-old boys. We had already cast the major parts and we thought we were going to have to do this huge search to find the kid. Our casting directors in London sent Fergus’ tape and we flew him in on a weekend; he read the lines and Mark and Brian cast him right there.”
Cage found Riordan to be “one of the most professional actors I’ve ever worked with and he wasn’t even fourteen yet. He is the model of how you want someone to behave on the set--he’s always on time, always prepared and he’s really, really good. He’s just got a presence about him, timing and confidence. He was out there in these remote locations, working very hard in the cold, outside, and he never once complained. Plus, he’s adorable.”

ABOUT THE BIKES AND STUNTS
For Johnny Blaze’s iconic motorcycle, the filmmakers chose the Yamaha V-Max. Its rider, Nicolas Cage, loved the choice. “I was relieved to be able to ride a Yamaha because it made my job so much easier,” says Cage. “When you have to ride a chopper with a raked front end, it is very hard to hit your mark. It’s almost impossible to maneuver and when you have three hundred people watching and a camera on you, you don’t want to make a mistake. The V-Max handled it all for me. It performs beautifully – I feel like I’m one with it. I feel completely connected to the motorcycle.”
Production Designer Kevin Phipps and Picture Action Vehicles Supervisor Alex King worked to dress the V-Max bike for the screen, making it look like an oily and burly but well-loved machine with age and scuff marks, burnished where the paint has worn off.
Then, of course, they would need another bike, for the Ghost Rider. Blaze’s bike changes as he does – when he becomes the Ghost Rider, his bike becomes the Hell Cycle. King explains: “The Hell version, the Ghost Rider’s bike, is transformed – it’s like molten lava, a seemingly burnt-out bike. For it to burst into flames, the visual effects people needed LED lights and orange marker points for the effects.”
Phipps adds, “This machine that has heated up to a molten state and cooled down again a thousand times. We looked at lava fields, high temperature steel manufacturing, and other expansion-contraction processes with metals that come about through heat expansion and corrosion. We experimented with paint finishes, using sands, high temperature paints, and expanding foams and gradually layered up the bike with very complicated paint finishes. Mark and Brian would come along, give notes and were ultimately delighted with what we achieved.”
Also, the bike would have to be set on fire (through the computer, in post production). To give the VFX Supervisor Eric Durst and the 3D Stereographer Craig Mumma ample reference, Phipps and King added LEDs and orange tracking markers to the bike, which could be removed by the VFX artists as the fire was added.
The motorcycle that Moreau rides is a Russian Ural Solo 750 customized with a new leather seat and vintage-looking saddle bags.
But what may be the most impressive vehicle in the film is the giant Bagger 288 commandeered by the Ghost Rider during his explosive fight in the quarry with the well-armed Carrigan and his crew. The Bagger is a gigantic bucket-wheel excavator or mobile strip mining machine that is up to 721 feet long and approximately 315 feet high.
As much attention was paid to riding these vehicles as the finding them. With Stunt Coordinator Markos Rounthwaite overseeing the stunt work, stuntman Rick English took on an important role as the Ghost Rider’s stunt double. “The stunt team is incredibly important,” praises Cage. “Rick is one of the great motorcycle riders in the world and the things that he can do with a bike are absolutely acrobatic. And Markos, who knows martial arts incredibly well, has designed moves that really bring a pop to the scenes.”
Rounthwaite was responsible not only for helping to design and plan an aggressive slate of stunts for his own team, but also keep his directors safe as they pushed the filmmaking envelope. “Markos came to us with a natural, old-school stunt approach,” says Neveldine. “He just wanted to crash cars and put guys on wires. He had an incredible stunt team – riders that could do wheelies on motorcycles and take great hits and jump off of trucks and were precision drivers. He also put us on the wires when we had to get a shot going over the cliff.”
Rounthwaite observes, “In stunt doubling, you need to really concentrate on how the actor moves, how they act, so they can mimic the actor’s body movements. So it’s not just the overall action you’ve got to take into consideration, it’s also how the actors move as well, and Rick’s very experienced and great at that.”
Stuntman Rick English adds, “We like the actors to do as much as they’re capable of doing – and Nick is very capable. We’d show him rehearsals, get some feedback from him and tweak the plan – he’d be very up for it all and very good at doing stunts. The same with the motorcycle riding. I went out riding with him when he first started on the picture; he hadn’t ridden for a long while and I thought we’d take it nice and easy, go nice and slow. And then, two minutes later, he shot past me about a hundred miles an hour and I thought, I better go catch up with him! He’s a very good rider and very safety conscious as well, which is good. He always respected Markos and the stunt team’s opinion.”
“Rick is the Michael Jordan of stunts,” says Taylor. “He is so dominant in everything. He could fight, he could do wire work, he could lay down a bike at eighty miles an hour. He could do all that and perform, too – Nick had developed a pretty complex and interesting style of movement for the demon, and for the scenes in which the demon is on the motorcycle, Rick was able to channel that and recreate it –not just mimic it, but make it happen.”
In addition, Rounthwaite was responsible for other behind-the-scenes stunts as well – notably wiring director Mark Neveldine and his camera to hang and sway over a cliff to get a shot. “I’m quite happy to put a highly regarded director on that hot seat,” Rounthwaite laughs.

ABOUT THE VISUAL EFFECTS AND 3D
Though the directors’ focus for Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance was to capture as much of the action in camera as possible, it was clear from the beginning that the film would have to employ CG effects as well. After all, the title character has a flaming skull.
Overseeing the VFX is Visual Effects Supervisor Eric Durst, who says, like all of the departments, the new Ghost Rider film would have a very different look from its predecessor. “Mark and Brian really wanted a new look for Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance. It’s a darker film, so we created a look that integrated with that. The look of the character isn’t stylized at all – it is as if Ghost Rider really existed, really had a flaming head. The skull is dark and charred – just as it would be if you really had a skull that was on fire. Another touch like that is the shoulders of the jacket – they would be bubbling up from the heat inside the body.”
The primary challenge in creating the VFX, says Durst, is that the character is “interactive. The light that comes off the flames on his head – it interacts with his shoulders and anything else nearby. But interactive light is very difficult to recreate in the computer. It’s so subtle, and it interacts in different ways with different fabrics and objects. So to achieve that, we took a hood with LED lights on it that flickered on and off. That had two great benefits for us: first, the LED lights served as tracking markers in the computer, so when Nick moved his head from left to right, we could make the skull match those movements. But the LEDs also cast a light on anything that was in proximity, so it would give us the light that would occur if the flame really was on his head.”
Durst also notes that since the release of the first Ghost Rider film, there have been tremendous advances in CG animation. “The foundation of getting flames in CG is fluid dynamics, and so much has happened technologically in just the last five or six years,” he says. “For the original film, Sony Pictures Imageworks created their own code and worked within the software systems that existed at the time. It was very labor intensive. For the new film, with six years’ worth of development of the technology in the field, we had a big head start. You can make things look stunningly real now.”
The effects were completed by Iloura, an Australian company. “We canvassed the world to see who had the best fire,” says Durst. “Their first test had everything – the right, dark look for the skull, the flames, the right vibe. Everyone fell in love with it right there, and Iloura did a great job on the movie.”
The film also brings the Ghost Rider in 3D. “The movie for us was always going to be in 3D, from the very beginning – we love making the movie a more immersive experience. It seemed like a really cool idea, especially with our style of shooting,” says Taylor. “We tried to push the envelope with the technology. The first thing they told us was all the things we couldn’t do – no handheld camera, no quick cuts, no lens flares, no soft foreground, no super-long lenses, no super-wide lenses… and we asked, well, why?”
“There are rules, and Mark and Brian wanted to break those rules, so it was my job to break them,” says stereographer Craig Mumma. “We wanted to take their style and adapt it to the screen and make 3D an enjoyable experience. The way Mark and Brian shoot, the camera work is an integral part of the movie, almost like another character. There’s no changing the way they shoot, so we had to come up with tools to adapt.”

SHOOTING IN ROMANIA AND TURKEY
Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance was filmed on location in Romania and Turkey. “Romania has an established film community,” says E. Bennett Walsh, executive producer of the film. “They have been brought up on lower-budget Hollywood films – they’ve done thirty or forty films in the five-to-ten-million-dollar range, plus Cold Mountain, but that was the exception. They understood the systems of how we make our films. The difference between Cold Mountain and our film is that for Cold Mountain they brought in two hundred people from outside Romania. We brought in approximately 25 people and the rest were Romanians.”
About the country and its film crew, Cage found that “Romania has an energy, it has a buzz to it, and ours was a hardworking crew that did a really good job. These people care; they value their work.”
The production of Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance was based in the Bucharest area, shooting a number of scenes on the sound stages and back lot of Castel Studios in Snagov. The crew also spent more than a month traveling and filming throughout scenic and historic central Romania (including parts of Transylvania).
“Shooting in Transylvania, we got those mountain roads, the majestic castle, and the grit we wanted for the Eastern European setting. Romania was perfect,” says director Mark Neveldine.
The roads on which Moreau rides in the opening scene of the film and, later, Carrigan pursues Nadya and Danny after they escape from the monastery were shot on the hairpin turns of the Transfăgărăşan Highway, the most dramatic paved road in the country traversing the crest of the Fagaras Mountains. As winter and snowfalls approached soon after filming, the highway was closed to traffic until June. (Although it is not seen in the film, the ruins of Cetatea Poienari, the 15^th century castle of Vlad the Impaler (Dracula) are perched along the highway, a 1400-step climb from the production’s base camp.)
One key scene was shot in a square in picturesque Sibiu, the largest and wealthiest of seven walled citadels built in the 12th century by German settlers (the Transylvanian Saxons). The beautiful city was designated a European Capital of Culture for 2007. A recently surfaced highway outside Sibiu that was not yet open to traffic is the location for another scene in which Blaze wins over Danny on the bed of Nadya’s stolen truck.
Moreau’s destination at the beginning of the film, where he will meet Nadya and Danny in the heavily-fortified monastery, was filmed at the Corvin Castle (also known as the Hunyadi Castle) in the city of Hunedoera (also located in Transylvania). The beautifully restored and maintained 14^th-centrury Gothic fortress (complete with giant moat) is one of the most spectacular castles in the world.
Carrigan’s near fatal encounter with the Ghost Rider was shot in a giant quarry outside of the city of Targu Jiu in southwestern Romania. Parts of the quarry sequence, including Carrigan’s resurrection at the hands of Roarke, were shot on a set re-created on the backlot at Castel Studio outside of Bucharest.
From Romania, the production moved to Turkey. “I was there six years ago scouting on another film and thought, ‘These locations are fantastic, I have to come back,’” says Walsh. “Mark and Brian wanted something entirely different for the third act to contrast the European locations where it was quintessentially lush. In Cappadocia and Pamukkale, color was drained from the earth and it felt ancient. This isn’t a $500,000 set design with CGI augmentation – these fantastic locations are real.”
“I was very excited about the palette of the movie,” notes Production Designer Kevin Phipps. “It starts quite green and lush in Romania and as the journey proceeds on the road and down into Turkey there's a great kind of bleed-out of color.”
Cappadocia hosted the shooting of the final encounters between the Ghost Rider and Carrigan/Blackout and Roarke. Cage was very impressed with the country. “It was a completely new landscape for me – the rock formations of Cappadocia, where we filmed, are these spires of rocks containing rectangular windows without glass where people have lived for thousands of years. And within the Greek and Roman ruins there were thousands of these marble pieces atop one another, mountains of them, and we’re working like it’s a day at the office. Extraordinary! It is impossible to not be completely mystified and in awe.”
The scenes in the Sanctuary, the lair of Methodius and his monks to which Moreau leads Blaze, Nadya and Danny were also filmed in the Zelve Open-Air Museum in Cappadocia, an ancient almost impossibly fantasy-like village that is honeycombed with cave dwellings, religious and secular chambers. Christians and Muslims lived here for hundreds of years (into the 20^th Century).
Moving to Pamukkale in southwestern Turkey, the production shot the grand ceremony when Roarke intends to transfer his powers into Danny’s body. The location was the ruins of Hierapolis, the ancient Greek, later Roman, then Christian city, built atop a system of hot springs. (Pamukkale means “cotton terraces,” named for white travertine terraces created by the springs.) The specific site of the satanic ceremony is the well-preserved Roman amphitheatre dating from the 2^nd Century AD.
Ciarán Hinds, who as Julius Caesar commanded Roman attention in the HBO series Rome, was impressed with the setting. “You stand in the center of this semi-circle arena and can be heard by everybody--you imagine a full house listening to the great ancient plays. Because I come from the theatre as well, it was a thrill to just stand there and absorb the atmosphere. It was beautiful, and beautifully taken care of—and here we are having some kind of weird Devil ceremony in it. That was quite fun.”

ABOUT THE CAST
NICOLAS CAGE (Johnny Blaze / Ghost Rider) is Dr. of Fine Arts, Cal State Fullerton. Colonel, Jefferson Parish NOPD, Ambassador UNODC, Amnesty International Luminary.
He is also an Academy Award® winner and one of the most versatile actors working today, equally known for his poignant portrayals in both drama and comedy. He was recently seen in Drive Angry opposite Amber Heard; Trespass, with Nicole Kidman; The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, his seventh collaboration with producer Jerry Bruckheimer; the action-comedy Kick-Ass, directed by Matthew Vaughn; and Season of the Witch, directed by Dominic Sena.
In 2009, Cage starred in Werner Herzog’s critically acclaimed drama Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans as a drug- and gambling-addicted detective in post-Katrina New Orleans. Prior to this film, he lent his voice to the animated features G-Force, a family adventure produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and Astro Boy, based on the classic manga series. Cage also starred in the sci-fi thriller Knowing and Bangkok Dangerous, an action thriller.
In 2007, Cage starred as Johnny Blaze in Ghost Rider, written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson. The film, based on the Marvel comic book character, immediately set a new record as the highest-grossing debut for a film opening on the President’s Day weekend. That same year, Cage starred in the worldwide box office success National Treasure: Book of Secrets.
His memorable performance as an alcoholic drinking himself to death in the drama Leaving Las Vegas, directed by Mike Figgis, earned Cage the Oscar^® for Best Actor as well as a Golden Globe Award^® and Best Actor prizes from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Chicago Film Critics and the National Board of Review. He also received Academy Award®, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) nominations for his dual role as twin brothers Charlie and Donald Kaufman in Spike Jonze’s quirky comedy Adaptation, which co-starred Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper.
Other film credits include Neil LaBute’s The Wicker Man, Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, Gore Verbinski’s The Weather Man and Andrew Niccol’s Lord of War. Cage was also heard as the voice of Zoc in the animated film The Ant Bully.
Cage made his film directorial debut in 2002 with Sonny, for which he cast an impressive group of actors including Golden Globe winner James Franco, Mena Suvari, Brenda Blethyn and Harry Dean Stanton. The film was accepted at the 2002 Deauville Film Festival.
Cage’s many other credits include Next, Matchstick Men, Windtalkers, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, The Family Man, Bringing Out the Dead, Eight Millimeter, Snake Eyes, City of Angels, Face/Off, Kiss of Death, Guarding Tess, It Could Happen to You, Red Rock West, Honeymoon in Vegas, Raising Arizona, Vampire’s Kiss, Peggy Sue Got Married, Valley Girl, Racing with the Moon, The Cotton Club and Rumble Fish.
It was Cage’s portrayal of a tormented Vietnam vet in Birdy that first established him as a serious actor. Directed by Alan Parker, Birdy won the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Cage then received a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actor for his role as Cher’s lover in Moonstruck. David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, starring Cage and Laura Dern, won the Palme d’Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. Other honors include a 1993 Golden Globe nomination for his role in Honeymoon in Vegas, a prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award from the Montreal World Film Festival in 1996 and the first-ever Distinguished Decade in Film Award at ShoWest in 2001. Cage was also honored by the prestigious American Cinematheque in 2001.

Ciarán Hinds (Roarke) was most recently seen in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, and The Woman in Black. He will next be seen in John Carter.
In 2009, he won the Best Actor Award at the Tribeca Film Festival for his performance in The Eclipse. His recent film work also includes Life During Wartime, Race to Witch Mountain, Stop-Loss, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, There Will Be Blood, Margot at the Wedding, The Nativity Story and Amazing Grace. He also co-starred with Eric Bana and Daniel Craig in Steven Spielberg’s controversial true-life drama Munich. In addition, Hinds starred on the HBO series “Rome,” earning an Irish Film and Television Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Julius Caesar.
Hinds’ previous film credits include Calendar Girls, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, Veronica Guerin, Road to Perdition, The Sum of All Fears, Titanic Town, Oscar and Lucinda, Some Mother’s Son, Circle of Friends, and the Arthurian epic Excalibur, in which he made his feature film debut.
Hinds started acting on the stages of his native North Ireland and worked extensively at the Glasgow Citizens’ Theatre. He went on to become a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he starred in such plays as “The Last Days of Don Juan,” “Troilus and Cressida,” “Edward II,” and “Richard III,” playing the titular role.

Violante Placido (Nadya) was nominated for the prestigious David di Donatello Award (which is her native Italy’s Oscars® equivalent), in the Best Actress category, for her performance in Giovanni Veronesi’s Che ne sarà di noi.
She has twice been nominated for The Silver Ribbon Award by the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists, for her performance in Lucio Pellegrini’s Ora o mai più and Sergio Rubini’s L’anima gemella, alongside Valentina Cervi. She and Cervi shared the Wella Prize, for their work in the latter film, at the 2002 Venice International Film Festival; six years later at the Festival, Placido was awarded the Kinéo Prize for her performance in Claudio Cupellini’s Lezioni di Cioccolato.
Placido made her feature starring debut in Enza Negroni’s Jack Frusciante è uscito dal gruppo, adapted from the popular novel of the same name. She has since appeared in over two dozen movies. In 2009, she starred in the Hindi film Barah Aana, directed by Raja Menon.
In 2010, she was directed by Anton Corbjin in The American, as Clara, George Clooney’s lover.
In 2011 she was directed in The Guetteur, a French movie directed by her father, the Italian director Michele Placido, alongside Daniel Autueil, Matthieu Kassowitz, and Italian actor Luca Argentero (Eat Pray Love).
In 2005, she released an album of self-penned songs entitled “Don’t Be Shy,” many of them performed in English, which was followed by a tour across Italy. Placido is now on tour presenting the songs of her new album coming out this spring from the indie-label Mescal.

Johnny Whitworth (Carrigan) was born on Halloween in Charleston, South Carolina. At the age of 6, he knew he wanted to be an actor. His early years were spent moving around the South, attending any and all acting workshops available to him. At 15, he moved from Dallas, TX to Los Angeles to pursue acting professionally. At 18 he booked a recurring role on “Party of Five,” then landed his first film role in Bye Bye Love. He then starred in the cult classic Empire Records. Soon after, Whitworth took a break from acting until he starred in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rainmaker. Whitworth chose to hone his craft by doing character work in independent films, along with various studio projects like Gamer and James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma. His most recent projects include Neil Burger’s Limitless co-starring opposite Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro, and Valley of the Sun, which he co-produced.

Adventure, action, comedy, drama, epic, science fiction, melodrama, fantasy, thriller... There is not a single field that Christopher Lambert (Methodius), one of the only French international actors, has not experienced. Able to either be a prisoner in a futuristic cell (Fortress), a business man hunted by the Japanese mafia (The Hunted), a chess champion (Knight Moves), a modern prince charming (Arlette) or a God of Thunder (Mortal Kombat), Lambert instantaneously slips into his many diverse characters, as different from each other as they can be. One day immortal (Highlander), the next day he turns into a hit man's apprentice (Max and Jeremie).
Born in the United States, Christopher Lambert was raised in Switzerland where his vocation was revealed thanks to participating in theater at school. He joined The Conservatoire in Paris, which he quit after two years. After leaving The Conservatoire he had a few little parts in French films, of which the playing of a crook in Le Bardu Telephone drew the attention of producers. In 1982, Hugh Hudson selected him from hundreds of candidates to be Tarzan, the part that launched him as an international star. Greystoke: Lord of the Apes was a huge success worldwide. After starring in Paroles et Musique for writer/director Elie Chouraqui, Christopher joined Luc Besson for Subway, for which he received the Cesar for Best Actor. His meeting with Russell Mulcahy in 1986 gave rise to an unforgettable movie, where he played the immortal, Connor MacLeod. Highlander was such a phenomenal success that two other movie sequels followed as well as two TV series and a cartoon.
Professional, calm and reserved, Christopher Lambert has always devoted himself to varying his eclectic career, moving without a hitch from action movies (Deux Doigts sur la Gachette, Tashunga) to comedies (Hercule et Sherlock, Arlette), from thrillers (Knight Moves) to science fictions (Fortress, Mortal Kombat).
Over the course of his impressive and diverse career, Christopher has worked with a pantheon of respected directors, writers and producers including Elie Chouraqui, Michael Cimino, Claire Devers, Stuart Gordon, Russell Mulcahy, Claude Zidi, Hugh Hudson and Luc Besson. Christopher is also a talented producer as well. He produced Genial Mes Parents Divorsent! and Neuf Mois, two very popular comedies and big successes in the French movie business abroad.
With Gideon (Drama - 1998), Resurrection (Thriller - 1998), Vercingetorix (Epic - 1999), Highlander: End Game (Action - 1999) and The Point Men (Action Thriller - 2000); Just Like You (Drama - 2002), Janis & John (Comedy - 2003), Dalida (Drama - 2004) and Day Of Wrath (Historical thriller - 2005), Christopher Lambert continued to make his range of movie choices even broader. The variety of the roles he plays is an attempt not to stay in any one particular genre. In the last few years, Christopher has been focused on making European movies, including Trivial, directed by Sophie Marceau (2007), The Bedside Man, directed by Alain Monne (2009) and the internationally acclaimed White Material, with Isabelle Huppert and directed by Claire Denis (2010).

Having first entered the public eye as Stringer Bell, the calculating de facto leader of a Baltimore drug empire in HBO’s critically acclaimed original series “The Wire,” IDRIS ELBA (Moreau) has gone on to make his mark as an actor to watch in Hollywood with a string of well-received performances in high-profile films.

Elba started his career in his native London, where he had become a mainstay on British television by his mid-twenties. He starred in some of the UK’s top rated shows, such as “Dangerfield,” “Bramwell” and “Ultraviolet.” In 2000, “Ultraviolet” was purchased by Fox in the United States, offering Elba the break into the American marketplace that he was looking for. After moving to New York, Elba received rave reviews for his portrayal of Achilles in Sir Peter Hall’s off-Broadway production of “Troilus and Cressida,” considered one of Shakespeare’s more complicated plays. Shortly thereafter he landed a part on the acclaimed television series “Law & Order.”

Around the same time, Alexa Fogel, who was responsible for casting HBO’s award winning series “Oz.” was looking for actors for another HBO series set in Baltimore. Sensing that he would be perfect for the gritty new series, she set up a meeting with the show’s creator David Simon. Elba scored, landing the role of Stringer Bell, the lieutenant of a Baltimore drug empire on “The Wire.” As the right hand and brains behind the operations of an imprisoned drug lord, Idris’ portrayal of the complex but deadly Bell quickly became one of the most compelling on US television. As popularity of the show grew around the world, so did the appreciation of global audiences and critics for Elba’s landmark performance.

Elba’s leading role debut was in the HBO Original Film, “Sometimes in April,” by critically acclaimed director Raoul Peck. Set during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Idris’ portrayal of Augustan, a Hutu soldier trying to save his Tutsi wife and family during the mass killings, received rave reviews. A prolific run of leading roles followed: in Tyler Perry’s dramatic feature, Daddy’s Little Girls, opposite Hilary Swank in the thriller The Reaping and in the horror thriller 28 Weeks Later.

Elba next starred in the award-winning film American Gangster, directed by Ridley Scott. Elba, as Tango, a drug boss battling Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) to establish himself as the number one importer of heroin in the Harlem district of Manhattan. Based on a true story, the film was released in November 2007.

In June 2007, Elba moved to London to start filming Guy Ritchie’s new film RocknRolla, also starring Gerard Butler, Thandie Newton and Tom Wilkinson. He played Mumbles, a gang member on the trail of a stolen painting. The film was released in October 2009 and went straight to #1 in the UK box office in its first week of release. Following this success, the film was released in October 2008 in the US.

April 2008 saw the release of the crime thriller Obsessed, directed by Steve Shill. Elba starred opposite Beyonce Knowles, and the movie took $28.5 million on its opening weekend, storming to #1 in the box office and becoming the highest-grossing opening on record for the ‘stalker thriller’ genre movie. Elba plays a successful business man with a beautiful wife who finds his idyllic life threatened by a sinister employee turned stalker.

In March 2009, Elba appeared on American television screens in the hit show “The Office.” Elba’s character was a no-nonsense addition to the Dunder Mifflin offices who found himself in competition with Steve Carell’s Michael Scott over the course of six episodes.

Elba played the leading role in two successful action pictures in 2010. First came the comic book adaptation The Losers, in which he shared the screen with Zoë Saldana, Chris Evans and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Then, in August, he led the line in the number one US box office hit Takers, alongside Matt Dillon, T.I. and Hayden Christensen.

In May 2009, Elba had moved to Glasgow to film Legacy, directed by Thomas Ikimi. He played Malcom Gray, a black-ops agent who returns from a botched mission in Eastern Europe to New York, where he is torn between retribution and personal salvation as he mentally unravels. Elba served as executive producer on the film, which was chosen to close the Glasgow Film Festival in February 2010, and received its US premiere to great critical acclaim at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2010.

Elba was next seen in the BBC crime drama series “Luther,” playing the title role of John Luther, a complex detective struggling with his own terrible demons. The six episodes were shown on BBC 1 in April 2010, and audiences and critics alike responded to Elba’s portrayal of the tormented detective. The series was been picked up by BBC America and was broadcast in October 2010, earning Elba rave reviews once again. Elba’s performance earned him nominations at the 2011 Golden Globe^® Awards and Emmy Awards. The second season of “Luther” aired last summer in the U.S., earning Elba another Golden Globe nomination at the 2012 awards.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
MARK NEVELDINE (Director) was born in Watertown, NY and majored in Drama/Psychology at Hobart College where he was a lettered athlete and a Dean’s List student. He began his career as an award-winning actor and Off-Broadway writer/director in over 25 plays in New York City, and then moved behind the camera as Director of Photography on films, documentaries, music videos and a television pilot. His narrative DP work includes This Beautiful Life, starring Ned Beatty. BRIAN TAYLOR (Director) was born in Pasadena, CA, has served as Director of Photography on a variety of award-winning shorts and independent features. His work as Director and Cinematographer on The Man Who Loved Elevators (a short based on the work of Charles Bukowski) established Taylor as an HD pioneer and highlighted Cinequest’s DigitalxDigital showcase.
The two joined forces on The Keys (a surreal action/adventure) filmed in Morocco, inventing one of their many camera techniques, “roller-dolly” (U.S. patent pending). The early part of 2003 was spent in the Dominican Republic completing work on a documentary about the Fuentes Cigar Family.
Upon returning to the United States, the directing team was promptly snatched up by @radical.media for commercials and music videos. Through @radical.media they have directed award-winning commercials for Nike, Motorola, Bud Light, Powerade, KFC, Michelob and Honda.
Neveldine and Taylor hit the feature scene hard when they wrote, directed and camera-operated the instant cult classic Crank, starring Jason Statham, Amy Smart, & Dwight Yoakam, with Lakeshore Entertainment & Lionsgate. They wrote and produced the cult thriller Pathology, starring Milo Ventimiglia. N/T then reunited with Statham for Crank 2: High Voltage, and also wrote/directed Gamer starring Gerard Butler, Logan Lerman, Amber Valletta, Kyra Sedgewick, John Leguizamo, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, and “Dexter” star Michael C. Hall. The team has also written for 20th Century Fox, Mandalay, and Warner Bros.

SCOTT M. GIMPLE & SETH HOFFMAN (Screenplay by) receive their first feature film credit with Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance. Gimple and Hoffman previous worked together on the television series “FlashForward,” where they both served as writers; in addition, Hoffman was a co-producer of that series and Gimple served as executive story editor. Separately, Gimple serves as a writer and supervising producer of AMC’s “The Walking Dead”; other television credits include the series “Chase,” “Fillmore!,” and “Life,” among others. Hoffman served as a writer on the series “Prison Break” and writer and executive producer of “House.”

DAVID S. GOYER (Screenplay by / Story by / Executive Producer) is a filmmaker who has long balanced the world of smartest, hippest and most obscure comic books and other-worldly realms of super-heroes and fantastical characters with his passion for telling character driven stories.
Among his upcoming projects, Goyer is in development with Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment on The Invisible Man, a reimagining of the H.G. Wells classic that he will write and direct. As a screenwriter, most recently wrote the script for the new Superman: Man of Steel for Warner Bros. The story for the script is by Goyer and Christopher Nolan, which Nolan will serve as a producer.
Goyer’s most recent feature film directing effort was the hit supernatural thriller, The Unborn, starring Odette Yustman, Gary Oldman, Meagan Good, Cam Gigandet, James Remar, Jane Alexander, and Idris Elba. Based on his own original script, the story follows a young woman pulled into a world of nightmares when a demonic spirit haunts her and threatens everyone she loves.
Goyer’s other feature directing credits include The Invisible, which centers on a teenager who, after being attacked and left for dead, finds himself in limbo, invisible to the living and racing against time to find his body before he truly perishes. The film starred Justin Chatwin, Margarita Levieva, and Marcia Gay Harden. Goyer made his directorial debut with something completely different: ZigZag, a fresh, funny, and fiercely poignant account of a robbery in reverse where two unlikely heroes fight to return a large sum of stolen cash. The film featured stand-out performances from a cast including Wesley Snipes, John Leguizamo, Oliver Platt, Natasha Lyonne and Sam Jones III. ZigZag was adapted by Goyer from the acclaimed novel by Landon Napoleon.
As a screenwriter, Goyer’s recent credits include co-writer on Warner Bros.’ acclaimed blockbuster Batman Begins with director Christopher Nolan, which explores the origins of the Batman legend and the Dark Knight’s emergence as a force for good in Gotham. He also co-wrote the story of the acclaimed blockbuster sequel The Dark Knight. Goyer is also involved on the story for the next Batman.
In addition to Batman, Goyer is involved with the blockbuster Marvel Comics’ franchise, Ghost Rider, which he served as one of the executive producers on the first installment.
As an author, Goyer’s first novel, Heaven’s Shadow, which he is co-wrote with author Michael Cassutt, was published in hardcover by Ace Books, an imprint of the Penguin Group (USA), last July. Heaven’s Shadow will be the first of a science fiction trilogy including Heaven’s War and Heaven’s Fall. The high concept adventure trilogy launches with Heaven’s Shadow, which begins when an object is discovered heading directly for Earth. This leads to widespread international panic, and a competition between nations to be the first to land on what appears to be a breakaway meteor. Following an international showdown, two rival teams of astronauts embark on a dangerous race to get to the object first. However, this encounter with the unexpected, leads to an epic adventure when they come face-to-face with the alien forces behind this threat to humanity. Blending science fiction and suspense, the novel spins a web rich with the unexplainable and pushes the boundaries of what is imaginable.
Goyer made his big breakout with Blade, based on the Marvel Comic about a legendary vampire hunter. Starring Wesley Snipes and Kris Kristofferson, the film drew accolades for the blazing action and humor, and became one of Hollywood’s most successful superhero franchises. Blade 2, written by Goyer (who served as executive producer), and directed by Guillermo Del Toro. Goyer went on to direct Blade: Trinity, which he also wrote and produced. The film features Snipes joining forces with the Nightstalkers (Jessica Biel and Ryan Reynolds).
In addition to his several film projects, Goyer is a television producer. Most recently, he served as co-creator and Executive Producer on “FlashForward.” The show had a strong, loyal following and received critical acclaim including the series pilot directed by Goyer. The story chronicled the chaos when everyone in the world experiences a mysterious vision of the future. The show aired on ABC during the 2009 – 2010 season. His other television credits include Executive Producer on “Blade,” Spike TV’s first original scripted series, which starred Kirk “Sticky” Jones as Blade. He also served as Executive Producer with David Heyman (Harry Potter) and Brannon Braga on “Threshold,” the CBS hour-long contemporary sci-fi drama about the government’s response to an alien threat, which ran during Fall 2005. Goyer also served as director of the pilot for the series.
Ever since he was a kid growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Goyer wanted to write comic books, which eventually lead to his bringing them to life for the big screen. Goyer sold his first action script at the age of 22 while still at USC, which became the Jean Claude Van Damme thriller Death Warrant, going on to pen among others, the acclaimed Dark City (named Best Film of 1998 by Roger Ebert).
His love of comic books also led to a four year stint actually writing one for DC Comics. As co-writer of The Justice Society it was one of DC’s biggest hits.

When he was 20 years old, Steven Paul (Producer) wrote, produced, directed, starred in, and raised the $3.2 million budget for the motion picture Falling in Love Again, with Susannah York, Elliott Gould, and a then-unknown Michelle Pfeiffer in her feature film debut. At 22 years of age, he wrote, produced, and directed Slapstick, starring Jerry Lewis, Marty Feldman, and Madeline Kahn. He also co-wrote and produced the Columbia Pictures film Baby Geniuses, starring Kathleen Turner and Christopher Lloyd.

Paul is now the President and CEO of Crystal Sky, a multi-faceted entertainment company specializing in the development, production, finance, and worldwide distribution of motion picture and television programming. The company also encompasses a talent management division, as well as a division that specializes in visual effects.

His recent productions include the Hallmark Channel telefilm “A Christmas Wish” and the feature films Beyond, Tekken, and Doomsday, as well as the first Ghost Rider film.

One of Hollywood’s most successful and prolific producers, Ashok Amritraj (Producer) has produced or executive produced over 100 films during the span of his 30-year career, with a worldwide gross in excess of $1.5 billion. He has partnered with every major studio in Hollywood, and produced films starring the likes of Bruce Willis, Sandra Bullock, Sylvester Stallone, Angelina Jolie, Cate Blanchett, Dustin Hoffman, Steve Martin, Antonio Banderas, Robert De Niro, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Kate Hudson, Kurt Russell, Dakota Fanning, Nicolas Cage and many more.
As Chairman and CEO of the Hyde Park Entertainment Group, Amritraj has grown the company into a cutting-edge independent alternative to the traditional Hollywood studio system, fully realizing his vision of a progressive global company that incorporates the most essential elements of a full-fledged studio. Hyde Park’s offerings encompass live-action, animation and cross-cultural cinema, and is capable of developing, producing and financing projects, as well as handling international sales and marketing.

In addition to Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance, Amritraj’s Hyde Park International most recently saw the release of Robert Rodriguez’s Machete, starring Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba and Danny Trejo, as well as the award-winning drama Blue Valentine, starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, and The Double, starring Richard Gere, Topher Grace and Martin Sheen.

Amritraj's Hyde Park and Image Nation Abu Dhabi partnered in November 2008 on a $250 million financing deal to develop, produce and distribute up to 20 feature films over seven years – with additional financing for the production of cross-cultural films. In October 2009, they extended their partnership to create a strategic alliance with Singapore’s Media Development Authority (MDA). Under the deal, Hyde Park Imagenation Singapore was launched to fund three to four films a year worth an estimated production value of 75 million USD over the next five years.
In 2011, Amritraj expanded his domain, taking over as CEO the venture between National Geographic Films, Hyde Park Entertainment and Image Nation. The venture will produce feature films, documentaries and television series designed to entertain and inspire family audiences around the world.

Amritraj’s box office hits include such films as Bringing Down the House, starring Steve Martin and Academy Award-nominee Queen Latifah, and Premonition, starring Sandra Bullock. Additionally, Amritraj has produced several critically acclaimed films, including Traitor, starring Don Cheadle and Guy Pearce, Shopgirl, with Steve Martin and Claire Danes, and Moonlight Mile, starring Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon and Jake Gyllenhaal. Other successful releases include Barry Levinson’s Golden Globe-nominated comedy Bandits, starring Cate Blanchett, Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton, Dreamer, starring Kurt Russell and Dakota Fanning, the Kate Hudson feature Raising Helen, which was directed by Hollywood legend Garry Marshall, Walking Tall, which starred The Rock, and many more.

Amongst the various awards garnered by Amritraj and his films, Amritraj was named “Producer of the Decade” by the Spirit of India Foundation, and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Indian International Film Academy. The California Trade and Tourism Council awarded Amritraj a star on their “Walk of Fame” for bridging “the relationship between California and India.” Amritraj received a special award from the American Indian Foundation (chaired by President Bill Clinton) for “making India and Indians proud’. He received a Certificate of Special Recognition from the United States Congress, and the 2004 Producer of Vision Award.

Amritraj served on the Foreign Film Board of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, was a member of Los Angeles Board for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and the International Council for the Emmy Awards. He currently serves on the advising board for the Dodge Film School at Chapman University.

Amritraj has pioneered the crossover cinema between India, Asia and Hollywood through film and cultural exchanges and has been called “India’s Ambassador to Hollywood”.

Amritraj was a former tennis professional, having played in every major tennis event including Wimbledon and the U.S. Open.

A former production chief for DreamWorks and New Line Cinema, MICHAEL DE LUCA (Producer) founded Michael De Luca Productions in March of 2004 and has a development and production agreement with Columbia Pictures.

De Luca continues to focus his company on developing appropriately budgeted, provocative specialized films with visionary filmmakers, as well as pop culture, mainstream genre films with franchise potential. His projects for Columbia have included David Fincher's Academy Award®-winning drama The Social Network and Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt. He is currently in pre-production for the studio on the Tom Hanks starrer Captain Phillips, a film about Captain Richard Phillips’ ordeal at the hands of Somali pirates, to be directed by Paul Greengrass. His most recent projects include The Sitter starring Jonah Hill, for 20th Century Fox, and the upcoming release Butter, starring Jennifer Garner, for The Weinstein Company. De Luca also produced this summer's remake of cult favorite Fright Night for DreamWorks.

Prior to forming Michael De Luca Productions, De Luca served as DreamWorks' Head of Production. At DreamWorks, he oversaw the day-to-day operations of the live-action division and the production of such films as Todd Phillips' Old School and Adam McKay and Will Ferrell's hit comedy Anchorman.

He previously spent 7 years as President and COO of New Line Productions. During his tenure, he created the highly successful Friday, Blade, Austin Powers and Rush Hour franchises. He championed such groundbreaking sleeper hits as Seven, Wag the Dog, Pleasantville, and Boogie Nights, and launched the directing careers of Jay Roach, Brett Ratner, Gary Ross, Alan and Albert Hughes, F. Gary Gray, the Farrelly brothers, and Paul Thomas Anderson.

Until recently, AVI ARAD (Producer) was the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Marvel Studios, the film and television division of Marvel Entertainment, and Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Entertainment. In June of 2006, Arad branched off to form his own production company – Arad Productions, Inc. Arad has been the driving force behind Marvel's Hollywood renaissance with a track record that has been nothing short of spectacular, including a string of No. 1 box office openings. As a producer, his credits include Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and Spider-Man 3 (Columbia Pictures), which was the top-grossing film of 2007; X-Men, X2: X-Men United and X-Men: The Last Stand (Twentieth Century Fox); The Hulk (Universal Pictures); Daredevil (New Regency); The Punisher (Lions Gate Entertainment); Blade, Blade II and Blade: Trinity (New Line Cinema); Elektra (Twentieth Century Fox); The Fantastic Four and its sequel Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (Twentieth Century Fox); Bratz: The Movie (Lionsgate); Ghost Rider (Columbia Pictures); Iron Man (Paramount Pictures); and The Incredible Hulk (Universal). Mr. Arad's current feature film slate includes The Amazing Spider-Man (Columbia Pictures), Ghost In The Shell (DreamWorks), Lost Planet (Warner Bros.), Venom (Columbia Pictures), Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (Columbia Pictures), Popeye (Sony Pictures Animation), Infamous (Columbia Pictures), Maximum Ride (Universal), Mass Effect (Legendary Pictures / Warner Bros.), and many more.
Arad has also been producing animation for over 20 years on such series such as “X-Men,” “Fantastic Four,” “Silver Surfer,” “Iron Man,” “Spider-Man,” "Conan the Adventurer," "King Arthur & the Knights of Justice," “Bots Master,” and on direct-to-video animated features such as “Avengers,” “Iron Man” and many others.
Additionally, Arad created “Mutant X” and produced sixty-six hours of the live-action TV series for Tribune Entertainment. He also produced thirteen hours of “Blade”, the live-action TV series for Spike TV. Mr. Arad is currently working on the animated TV series based on the iconic video game character Pac-Man.
Born in Cyprus and raised in Israel, Arad came to the United States during his college years and enrolled at Hofstra University to study industrial management. He earned a bachelor of business administration from the University in 1972. A long-established expert in youth entertainment, Arad is one of the world’s top toy designers. He has been involved in the creation and development of over two hundred successful products, including action figures, play sets, dolls, toy vehicles, electronic products, educational software and video games. In fact, virtually every major toy and youth entertainment manufacturer, including Toy Biz, Hasbro, Mattel, MGA, Nintendo, Tiger, Ideal, Galoob, Tyco, Sega and THQ, has been selling his products for more than 30 years.
In addition to his toy, animation, and film projects, today, Arad serves as the Executive Advisor of NAMCO BANDAI Holdings and as a Chairperson of Production I.G's American affiliate - Production I.G., LLC.

Ari Arad (Producer) started out at Village Roadshow in feature development before heading to Marvel Studios in 2001, where he executive produced and co-produced numerous films in addition to contributing to the development of several Marvel video games. In June of 2006, Ari joined Avi Arad in creating Arad Productions, Inc., where he currently serves as the President. As an executive producer his credits include “Blade: the TV Series” (Spike TV), Ghost Rider (Columbia Pictures), and Iron Man (Paramount Pictures). He acted as a co-producer on The Punisher (Lionsgate Entertainment). His current feature film slate includes a live-action adaptation of Ghost in the Shell (DreamWorks), Lost Planet (Warner Bros.), Venom (Columbia Pictures), Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (Columbia Pictures), Infamous (Columbia Pictures), Maximum Ride, and many more.
Ari Arad holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University, where he studied philosophy.

E. BENNETT WALSH (Executive Producer) was most recently executive producer of Knight and Day, starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz (directed by James Mangold) and the crime thrillers Edge of Darkness, starring Mel Gibson (directed by Martin Campbell), and State of Play (based on the highly praised BBC miniseries of the same name), starring Russell Crowe, Rachel McAdams, Jason Bateman, Ben Affleck, Robin Wright Penn, Helen Mirren and Jeff Daniels (directed by Kevin Macdonald).
Walsh produced the critically acclaimed The Kite Runner, based on the international best-selling novel; directed by Marc Forster, it garnered Golden Globe® and BAFTA nominations for Best Foreign Language Film. He served as producer on the thriller Disturbia, starring Shia LaBeouf, which became one of DreamWorks’ biggest grossing films of the year: its international box office surpassed $100 million—more than five times the film’s budget. He also executive produced Ghost Rider, starring Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes (directed by Mark Steven Johnson).
With Volumes 1 and 2 of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Mr. Walsh enjoyed one of his greatest successes as executive producer. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 earned a Golden Globe® nomination for star Uma Thurman as well as five BAFTA nominations. The two films earned a combined international gross of over $300 million.  
DAVID S. GOYER (Executive Producer / Screenplay by / Story by) Please see above bio.
STAN LEE (Executive Producer) is the Founder of POW! Entertainment and has served as its Chairman and Chief Creative Officer since inception. Known to millions as the man whose super heroes propelled Marvel to its preeminent position in the comic book industry, Stan Lee’s co-creations include Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men, The Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Daredevil, Silver Surfer and Dr. Strange.

Now the Chairman Emeritus of Marvel Media, Lee first became publisher of Marvel Comics in 1972. He is recognized as the creative force that brought Marvel to the forefront of the comic publishing industry. In 1977, he introduced Spider-Man as a syndicated newspaper strip that became the most successful of all syndicated adventure strips and now appears in more than 500 newspapers worldwide -- making it the longest-running of all super hero strips. 

From June 2001 until the formal creation of POW! in November 2001, Stan Lee worked to form POW! and to create intellectual property for POW! and start the development of various POW! projects.
MARK STEVEN JOHNSON (Executive Producer) is currently directing Killing Season, starring Robert De Niro and John Travolta. He previously directed When in Rome, starring Kristen Bell, and wrote and directed Ghost Rider, starring Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes, and Daredevil, starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, Colin Farrell and Michael Clarke Duncan. Johnson made his directorial debut with Simon Birch in 1998. Prior to that, he wrote the hit comedy Grumpy Old Men and its successful sequel, Grumpier Old Men.
BRANDON TROST (Director of Photography), a fourth-generation filmmaker raised on movie sets, started his career as a very young assistant to his father, Ron Trost, a special-effects craftsman. After years of learning the intricacies of filmmaking and developing an appreciation for the look of film and the art of cinematography, he enrolled in the Los Angeles Film School where he developed a personal style and aesthetic under the tutelage of such Academy Award® winning/nominated cinematographers as William Fraker, Ralf Bode and John Alonzo. 
Trost quickly gained extensive experience shooting in all formats. Today, with more than twenty feature films, dozens of music videos and over ninety short films to his credit, he continues to push the boundaries of film. Recent films shot during this still-young and promising career include his first collaboration with Neveldine/Taylor, Crank 2: High Voltage (starring Jason Statham and Amy Smart); He Was a Quiet Man (starring Christian Slater, William H. Macy and Elisha Cuthbert), winner of the Best Cinematography Award at the Newport Beach Film Festival; Rob Zombie’s Halloween II; and the SNL feature film MacGruber (starring Will Forte, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillippe and Val Kilmer). 

Having trained as an architect, KEVIN PHIPPS (Production Designer) started working in the film industry as a draughtsman on Return of the Jedi.  
Quickly rising through the ranks of the Art Department, he has become an integral part of the creative teams for some of the most visually exciting films and largest set constructions of recent cinema history.  
Phipps has worked with Stanley Kubrick (Eyes Wide Shut), Ridley Scott (1492: Conquest of Paradise), Tony Scott (Spy Game), David Lynch (Dune), Luc Besson (The Fifth Element), Wolfgang Petersen (Troy), Oliver Stone (Alexander), and the Wachowski Brothers (V for Vendetta), amongst many other influential directors.
His long working association with Tim Burton began on Batman and has continued through to Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Phipps has traveled and worked extensively throughout the world, including China, Costa Rica, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, Romania, Spain, Thailand and Turkey. His career has bridged both digital visual effects and in-camera, miniature, and optical effects. He has a particular interest in the integration of digital technology with traditional film making techniques. His philosophy is always to use the most visual and cost-effective technique available, in order to achieve the “look” for the production.
Phipps was nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on the highly acclaimed HBO series “Band of Brothers”. He won an award from the American Art Directors Guild for his work on Sleepy Hollow and has earned nominations for his work on V for Vendetta and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
He is a keen long distance runner and has completed 11 Marathons. He dreams of a sub 3-hour time. He has lectured at the Royal College of Art in London, the National Film School in England, and both in Oslo and Helsinki at digital design conferences. 
BRIAN BERDAN, A. C. E. (Editor) began his career sweeping floors at a sound studio in San Francisco. His persistence paid off and soon he was allowed to use a vacuum. He was an apprentice editor on the David Lynch cult classic, Blue Velvet, and also trained on Peter Bogdanovich’s Noises Off and Oliver Stone’s Heaven and Earth. It was Stone who gave Berdan his first full credit as editor, on the controversial Natural Born Killers. He went on to edit for Stone again on Nixon and U-Turn. Enjoying a range of genres, his work includes independent films such as Outsourced and Smoke Signals, as well as more mainstream projects such as the John Cusack/Minnie Driver comedy Grosse Point Blank, The Mothman Prophecies, with Richard Gere, and Crank, starring Jason Statham.
Bojana Nikitovic (Costume Designer) most recently designed costumes for the Ralph Fiennes-directed Coriolanus (starring Gerard Butler, Ralph Fiennes, Vanessa Redgrave and Brian Cox) and John Stockwell’s Cat Run (Paz Vega, Tony Curran and Christopher McDonald). As assistant costume designer, she collaborated with the esteemed designer Milena Canonero on a series of films that include Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and John Johnson’s The Wolfman as well as the Metropolitan Opera production of Puccini’s “Tosca.”
Nikitovic’s career as costume designer has been distinguished by her extensive and versatile work on scores of European theatrical, opera and ballet productions of contemporary works as well as classics by Shakespeare, Moliere, Ibsen, Goldoni, Rossini, Massenet, Verdi, Liszt, Stravinski and Prokofiev. She is the recipient of numerous theatre awards in her native Serbia.
David Sardy (Music by) was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1967. Growing up playing in numerous underground rock bands and touring since the age of 14, he began touring and recording in earnest with his band Barkmarket in 1987. At the same time, he worked in Off Off Broadway’s Theater for the New City as a sound designer, and writing music for independent films. Sardy and his bandmates were signed as the first artist to be released on Rick Rubin’s newly named American Recordings. While touring, recording six albums, and writing and producing songs for Barkmarket, Sardy gained many fans in other bands, who often asked Sardy to produce their own recordings. Over time, these productions became more and more successful and diverse, including seminal recordings from Slayer, The Dandy Warhols, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Marilyn Manson, Johnny Cash, Oasis, Wolfmother, Jet, LCD Soundsystem, Band of Horses, and Spoon, as well as Library of Congress recordings of Sacred Harp shape-note singing. He has also won three Grammy Awards and been nominated two additional times. He recently scored Columbia Pictures’ hit films 21 and Zombieland. His music will next be heard in Columbia Pictures’ Premium Rush.  
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