Last night on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Nicolas Cage confirmed that he's signed on to reprise his role as Johnny Blaze in the Ghost Rider sequel Spirit of Vengeance. The Crank team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor are directing.

As we reported a month ago, details of the script, by FlashForward's Scott Gimple and Seth Hoffman under the supervision of Davide S. Goyer, are being kept under wraps.

Columbia and parent company Sony are in a rush to begin production on the sequel by November to prevent the rights from automatically reverting to Marvel. There had been talk in April that the studio might push forward without the busy Cage so that it could beat the deadline.

The first Ghost Rider opened in February 2007 to almost universally terrible reviews — it has a 26-percent approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes — but went on to gross almost $230 million worldwide. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is produced by Avi Arad, Ari Arad, Michael De Luca and Steven Paul, with Goyer and Mark Steven Johnson executive producing.

Watch Ferguson's interview with Cage below. The Ghost Rider talk begins somewhere around the 2:30 mark.