Five years ago when Kevin Feige first announced a Blade reboot was in the works with two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali attached to star, comic book fans were pretty excited to see what he was going to bring to the iconic daywalker.
However since the film's announcement it's been hit with countless delays and script rewrites, leaving some to wonder if the Blade reboot will ever see the light of day.
via: Uproxx
Mahershala Ali has issued a surprising update on his full-fledged MCU debut. (He briefly voiced the character in an end-credits scene for The Eternals.)
“We’re working on it. That’s the best I could tell you,” Ali told Entertainment Weekly. “I’m really encouraged with the direction of the project. I think we’ll be back at it relatively soon.”
Ali’s update arrives on the heels of an eyebrow-raising report from Variety last month that claimed the actor almost quit the movie after Marvel went through five writers and two directors while trying to nail down a story for Blade:
One person familiar with the script permutations says the story at one point morphed into a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons. Blade was relegated to the fourth lead, a bizarre idea considering that the studio had two-time Oscar winner Ali on board.
Amid reports that Ali was ready to exit over script issues, Feige went back to the drawing board and hired Michael Green, the Oscar-nominated writer of “Logan,” to start anew. Speculation around town is that the studio is looking to make the film, now slated for 2025, on a budget of less than $100 million — a deviation from Marvel’s big-spending strategy.
Following the Variety report, Blade saw its release date pushed back again as Marvel adjusted its schedule due to delays from the writers and actors strike. As of this writing, the Blade reboot hits theaters on November 7, 2025.
I'm really rooting for this film to finally get off the ground, because whether people want to admit it or not Blade was one of the first comic book films that I feel people started to take seriously on the big screen, and birthed many franchises since then, such as X-Men.
Phase 4 was a hot mess, so I've got my fingers crossed that they can figure out how to bring Blade into the MCU and give us a kick ass movie that can deliver us from the mess that was phase 4.