Sony has been very slowly working on the idea of a Ghost Rider 2. Granted the first film wasn’t a Spider-man or Iron Man surprise, but it made it’s own decent amount of cash to be considered a success. Now Nicolas Cage himself has talked about the idea of a second film here and there but it looks like Sony might have to move a long without him.

According to Slashfilms, Cage’s schedule for National Treasure 3 will likely interfere with Ghost Rider 2, and that the studio is ready to go forward on the film without him. Writers Scott Gimple and Seth Hoffman (Flash Forward) worked with David Goyer on a script, which has just been turned in.

Now the reason for this semi rush (which studio would want to drop it’s Star from a sequel if it didn’t have to) is that unless the film goes into production by November 14th, 2010, Columbia Pictures (Sony) will lose the rights of the film and Marvel will regain them, which means Disney will gain them (Disney last year bought Marvel for somewhere around the $4+ billion mark).

I personally got my kick out of the first one and wouldn’t mind seeing a second film WITH Nicolas Cage in it. One of the reason is that I hate movies with inconstancy. The Batman series is well known for this that there is always a cast shuffle from one flick to the other. This also happened to Iron Man. Sony itself did a great job for Spider-man 1-3 and I hope that Sony can work this out that Cage does indeed return. Hell, start shooting the scenes without Cage in them until he wraps up production on National Treasure 3?

[Via Slashfilms]