A source in Australia has written to Superhero Hype with this update from the Ghost Rider set:
"My brother and I were just watching the F1 telecast on TV, which is happening at Albert Park here in Melbourne today. Nicolas Cage has just turned up, wearing one of the biggest cowboy hats I've seen in a LONG time, accompanied by a black jacket.
"He was asked by a reporter about 'an action film shooting here in Melbourne' to which he replied, 'it was very good, and I'm very excited'. Nicolas then went on to briefly mention he also loves F1 racing before walking off.
"He seemed a little disorientated, as he also was on Wednesday night's filming in Lt Lonsdale Street, but this probably would have been thanks to the mass media attention he's been getting here in Melbourne."
So why did the producers pick Melbourne to shoot Ghost Rider, a film set in the American Southwest? Executive Producer Bennett Walsh explained their choice to The Age: "Ghost Rider is Mr Walsh's second production in Australia; last year he made the military adventure Stealth in Sydney. When director Mark Steven Johnson looked at Melbourne, Mr Walsh says, 'he fell in love with it, especially the laneways and the architecture and the river with the network of bridges.' (Before you go getting a warm, fuzzy feeling, he adds that Ghost Rider is set in a 'nondescript city in Texas'.)
"Mr Walsh was speaking to The Sunday Age at the end of the first week of shooting in and around the motorcycle precinct in Elizabeth Street.
"'It was difficult,' he says of the night shoot that involved 200 people and 45 trucks loaded with gear, 'but not insurmountable'.
"In a few weeks, the bar will be raised just a little higher when the second unit starts work - that's another 150 people and 30 trucks of gear. It dwarfs anything Melbourne has seen before in terms of movie productions, and it demands a high degree of flexibility on the part of the council, the Melbourne Film Office and other interested parties."
Plus, local paper The Herald Sun had this item about the stunt double for actor Wes Bentley: "Former Big Brother survivor Vincent Amato has returned to his pre-reality TV life and is working as a structural engineer in Melbourne. However, there is still a little bit of the showbiz bug in him. Amato has scored the potentially bruising job as U.S. actor Wes Bentley's body double on the action blockbuster Ghost Rider. Bentley plays the film's bad guy character, Blackheart."
To see four new pictures from the set, click here.
Pictures of Cage wearing his cowboy hat can be found here.
Here's how the Columbia Pictures' film, scheduled for a 2006 release date, is described:
"The comic book adaptation, written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson (Daredevil), stars Nicolas Cage, Wes Bentley, Eva Mendes, Matt Long, Sam Elliott, Peter Fonda, and Donal Logue.
"In order to save his dying father, young stunt cyclist Johnny Blaze (Cage) sells his soul to Mephistopheles (Fonda) and sadly parts from the pure-hearted Roxanne Simpson (Mendes), the love of his life. Years later, Johnny's path crosses again with Roxanne, now a gogetting reporter, and also with Mephistopheles, who offers to release Johnny's soul if Johnny becomes the fabled, fiery Ghost Rider, a supernatural agent of vengeance and justice. Mephistopheles charges Johnny with defeating the despicable Blackheart (Bentley), Mephistopheles's nemesis and son, who plans to displace his father and create a new hell even more terrible than the old one."