By Emmanuel King
One year ago, Connor Storrie was waiting tables in Culver City. This week, he is negotiating to stand opposite Ryan Gosling in a Marvel movie.
The Hollywood Reporter first reported on October 27 that Storrie, the 26-year-old breakout of the hockey romance Heated Rivalry, is in talks to play the villain in Marvel Studios' Ghost Rider. Variety reported the same development, Entertainment Weekly confirmed that the actor is circling a villain role, and sources told Deadline he is in the mix. TheWrap independently reported that he is in talks to join the film. Marvel Studios, following its usual practice on casting, declined to comment, and no deal has been signed. Talks are not a contract, and this one should be read that way until the studio says otherwise.
What nobody can tell you yet is who he would play. The character has not been identified in any of the reporting, and Marvel has not formally specified Gosling's role either, though the reporting widely expects him to play Johnny Blaze, the stunt rider who bargains with the devil and becomes the Spirit of Vengeance. Ghost Rider has never had one signature nemesis in the comics, which makes the guessing harder. The most obvious candidate, Mephisto, is already taken in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Sacha Baron Cohen played him in Ironheart, and Cohen has said he knows nothing about this project. Names like Blackheart have surfaced in fan speculation, but at this point that is all it is, speculation.
The film itself is very real. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige announced Ghost Rider at San Diego Comic-Con in July, bringing Gosling and director Shawn Levy onto the Hall H stage. Gosling, who had talked publicly about the character for years, told the crowd: "As you know, this is a character I've wanted to play for a long time." Levy directs from a script by Jonathan Tropper, which makes the film a reunion: the three just made Star Wars: Starfighter together, due in theaters May 28, 2027. According to Variety, Levy and Gosling also produce, alongside Feige, Louis D'Esposito and Stephen Broussard, with Richie Palmer and Jessie Henderson as executive producers. Linus Sandgren, the cinematographer of Dune: Part Three, will shoot the film on film stock. Production is set for New York next year, and Marvel has dated the release for July 28, 2028.
Levy gives the project a proven hand. His Marvel debut, Deadpool & Wolverine, grossed $1.33 billion worldwide and stands as the highest-grossing R-rated film ever made. Ghost Rider has headlined films before, with Nicolas Cage playing Blaze in 2007 and again in 2011, and Gabriel Luna played a different Rider, Robbie Reyes, on television in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. This version, though, is the character's first lead turn inside the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with one of the biggest movie stars alive in the saddle.
Which brings us to the real story here: the speed of Storrie's rise, and what Marvel is betting on by chasing him.
Storrie plays Ilya Rozanov, a Russian hockey star, opposite Hudson Williams as Shane Hollander in Heated Rivalry, the rivals-to-lovers series that became a genuine pop culture event. The first season averaged 10.6 million viewers, according to TheWrap, and a second season is filming now for a premiere next spring on HBO Max. Before the show changed his life, the Texas-born actor was a waiter at Laurel Grill in Culver City, as Variety reported. His screen résumé before the breakout was thin but pointed: a film debut in 2023's Riley, and a brief, unforgettable turn in 2024's Joker: Folie à Deux as the inmate who fatally stabs Joaquin Phoenix's Arthur Fleck, a performance widely read as the arrival of the real Joker. In February he hosted Saturday Night Live, a gig that earned him an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series. His upcoming slate already includes Molly Gordon's comedy Peaked, Please with David Jonsson and Lola Tung, and Sarah Polley's adaptation of The Bell Jar, opposite Billie Eilish. He is represented by CAA.
Casting the villain of a franchise launch is a statement about who a studio believes can hold a screen against a star. Gosling did not drift into this role; he campaigned for it, for years, and Marvel built a Comic-Con moment around giving it to him. The actor across from him needs presence to spare, because the whole film is a face-off. If these talks close, Marvel is wagering that the most electric young actor of the moment can go toe to toe with him, in only his first major film lead. It is also a wager on timing. The window after a breakout is short, and Storrie's team is moving through it exactly the way the business teaches: convert heat into range, indies on one side, a franchise on the other, before the moment cools.
Nothing is official until Marvel confirms it, and deals in talks have fallen apart before. But the outline is already one of the great actor stories of the year: a waiter in Culver City, one television season, and suddenly the devil's own franchise comes calling. Check back for updates as the casting firms up.