Marvel just made yet another big change to its slate. Is dropping Blade a bad sign?
2023 saw the once-invincible MCU finally hit an overdue road block. First, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania disappointed at the box office. Then, Jonathan Majors, who was set to become the new big bad of the franchise as Kang, was arrested on assault charges and soon fired. Then, the 2023 Hollywood strikes curtailed production while The Marvels flopped.
While Deadpool & Wolverine has been a hit and Agatha All Along won wide praise and viewership, much of the rest of the Marvel lineup has been delayed until 2025. That included what was going to be a top contender for fans, Blade.
The original 1998 Blade was the first true Marvel hit movie. It adapted the cult character of a half-vampire hunting other vampires with Wesley Snipes in the title role. Thanks to a good script, great direction and Snipes’ performance, the movie grossed $150 million, paving the way for X-Men and Spider-Man among others. It also spawned two sequels and even a short-lived TV show.
In 2019, Marvel announced plans for a new version of the character to join the MCU with two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali in the role. However, that began a long and wild road of delays.
The wild road of Blade
The first blow was, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic that halted all production in Hollywood. Marvel did go ahead with Blade with Ali making a voice cameo in 2021’s Eternals. However, since then, it’s been a mess.
In February 2021, Stacy Osei-Kuffour was hired to write the film with Bassam Tariq attached to direct for a September 2021 start date. There was talk of the film set in the 1920s and maybe Mia Goth as villainess Lillith. Tariq left a year later amid talk of creative issues with Yann Demange replacing him. Then came new writers in Michael Starrbury, Nick Pizzolatto and Michael Green, with rumors abounding that Blade would almost be a secondary character in his own film for a female lead.
Then the 2023 Hollywood strikes played further havoc on filming, pushing back scores of Marvel films. In June of 2024, Demange departed, with Eric Pearson now working on the script and a new release date of November 2025.
Welp, that’s off the table as Disney has announced Blade will no longer be coming out in 2025 at all. Its planned release date of November 7 will now be taken by Predators: Badlands.
Why is Blade so hard to make?
Another delay for Blade is no shock. Given that the movie doesn’t even have a finished script yet, let alone a director, there’s no way it could have made a release date only a year from now.
The big question is why this movie is so hard to make. After all, a vampire hunter who’s half vampire himself is an easy concept; one would think Marvel could make it work. The script rewrites and clashes show it’s harder than it seems.
Maybe another factor is being in the shadow of the original films. That was only amplified when Snipes made a cameo in Deadpool & Wolverine, where he openly says, “There’s only one Blade, only gonna be one Blade.” While it was meant to be a joke about Ali, many fans will totally agree with Snipes’ words that the only way they’d accept a Blade reboot is if he reprises the role again.
It also shows the wider issues of the MCU, with constant talk about how the push and pull between the studio chiefs and the writers has caused some headaches. Blade is hardly the first project derailed by creative differences between directors/writers and their bosses but it seems to be happening a lot more lately.
Marvel still seems committed to the film, as Ali remains under contract for the role. Yet maybe it’s an omen that so many of these delays are compounding to keep Blade from seeing the light of day and this latest change may well be the final stake in the project.