GHOST RIDER'S MARK STEVEN JOHNSON, GARY FOSTER AND AVI ARAD

CULVER CITY, Calif. -- With Ghost Rider arriving in more than 3,600 theaters on Friday, writer/director Mark Steven Johnson said that he and star Nicolas Cage have begun to talk about a sequel.

"We just started talking about it, to be honest," Johnson said during the recent Ghost Rider junket. "When we were in Europe last week, for the first Nic and I can't help ourselves -- now that were rested and we're not so tired -- we started talking about ideas.

"But you don't want to jinx it. You never know what's going to happen, if people are going to go and if they're going to like it or not. It's not a slam-dunk character. It's not as well known as the other ones.

"If people want it, we would both love to do it."

Johnson was part of a roundtable interview at the Culver Studios lot last weekend with producers Avi Arad and Gary Foster.

Below are highlights from the interview:

* Foster said it was difficult realizing the first effects. "But we got it to 100 percent," he said. "The stuff looks spectacular."

"To control fire is an algorhythm, it's high math," Arad said.

* Johnson said that, unlike other CG characters such as Golum, Ghost Rider didn't have facial features to convey emotions.

"We don't got anything, we just got a blank slate," Johnson said. "So the first was really important to become an extension of his personality."

Johnson noted that the skull in the movie is actually Nic Cage's skull.

"It's a weird thing," he said. "We didn't want it to become like some of those CG movies where you don't feel it anymore, it feels so fake. I think you feel Nic in there. It's Nic's voice -- treated. It's Nic's skull. And it's Nic's body movement in all those emotional scenes."

* Cage wanted to do motorcycle stunts. "That's where Avi and I came and said, 'You can't do that,'" Foster said with a laugh.

* The filmmakers assured that no CG was performed on Cage's shirtless scene.

"He had a trailer on set," Foster said. "He would schedule his day so that he would have hours inside that trailer, knowing that he had to take that shirt off and he wanted to be cut. He did a great job."

* Johnson said there will likely be an extended version for the DVD, with some scenes that were cut. It won't be an R-rated director's cut, like with Daredevil.

* Johnson said that Sony was an asset in making Ghost Rider because of the studio's experience with Spider-Man. "And having Nic, who is a huge fan," Johnson said.

* Arad said that Johnson was successful in bringing Ghost Rider to a PG-13 audience.

"The big advantage when you have a writer/director who is a giant fan, he wouldn't write it just to take it out of the R, but to find the tone," Arad said. "Because the story itself has not reason not to be accessible to all. It's actually a normal Marvel metaphor."

* Arad noted Ghost Rider's journey to the big screen began some 10 years ago with the now-defunct Savoy Pictures. "These kind of projects take time," Arad said. "You almost get lucky when you don't make them, when the technology cannot support the story."

* Arad said Cage's involvement was "instrumental" in getting Ghost Rider to become a movie of its size, and praised the actor's work.

"Nic has this ability to, on one hand, to be a symbol of suffering," Arad said. "There is really a depth to this character that is really unique -- this is a pretty big story.

"At the same time, what he and Mark carved out in this story is really weird Nic Cage, which always was amazing. Last time I saw him like this was in Moonstruck."

* Johnson said Cage would challenge the writing whenever it got "lazy."

"It's easy to fall into cliches when you're writing a movie like this," Johnson said. "I had written his as more of a Jack Daniels-drinking, chain-smoking, terse kind of character. Nic has a way of looking at things that sometimes people think is just quirky, but it's really honest.

"I think people are weird. I think we're weird. And when we see people do something that's weird, but honest, we like them. Nic said to me, and he's right, 'I've never seen anybody drink Jack Daniels from a bottle.'"

Johnson noted that Cage was also important in the first big transformation scene.

"I just wrote pain, screaming pain, making it a screaming horror show," Johnson said. "He said, 'That's right, it's painful for Johnny, but it feels good for the Ghost Rider.' For the Ghost Rider, I like it when Nic always thought that the Ghost Rider thought flesh was ugly, that the bone and the skull were beautiful and pure. And all this blood and veins and flesh, he just wants it off.

"And I think that scene is disturbing because you see him go from screaming in pain to laughter, manical laughter. That's what make it so weird. And that's a Nic Cage thing."

* It was also Cage's idea to include The Carpenters songs.

"I had a very long but successful negotiation with Richard Carpenter," Foster said. "They had been made fun of in the movies over the years, but I assured him this was coming from a very honest place.

"Richard was very hesitant, and Nic wrote a very personal letter to him. And I got on the phone twice."

* Johnson said Cage is "fearless."

"We do some things and he'd look at me on the set and say, 'There's no safety net, is there?'" Johnson said.

Johnson said he finds it humorous about all the message board discussion regarding the Goth chick in the movie.

"She's in every trailer," he said, laughing. "It looks like she's co-starring in the movie. She's got one scene."

* Arad said Iron Man is starting in March and Incredible Hulk in June. He said that, as the interview was taking place, there was a meeting about The Punisher sequel.

"It would great for us to continue with Ghost Rider," he said.

* Arad said he doesn't see the comic-book movie genre fizzling. "Every time we make a movie, it gets better," he said.

* Asked about the X-Men franchise, Arad replied, "That's a question for Fox."

* Johnson said the most difficult part of the movie to shoot was the climatic showdown. "Because there was so much CG," he said. "And it had stunts, and it had emotion to it."