Marvel’s reboot of the Blade film franchise has been floundering for six years now, essentially since it was originally announced in 2019. And unfortunately, it seems Marvel may finally be throwing in the towel as the studio reportedly has “no sense of urgency” to actually make the movie, according to Variety.
The Blade reboot movie has been through multiple screenwriters and even directors since the Oscar winner Mahershala Ali was announced as the new actor to take over the role from original Blade actor Wesley Snipes. It’s reportedly gone through numerous concepts, without anyone being able to fully nail down the script.
According to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, they didn’t want to “simply just put a leather outfit on him and have him start killing vampires,” explaining that they want the movie to have its own unique vision that sets it apart from the Wesley Snipes version.
“It fell into the time when we started pulling back and saying, ‘Only accept insanely great.’ And it wasn’t ‘insanely great’ at the time,” Feige stated. “We didn’t feel like, as we often do, you can have a good script and make it a great script through production. We didn’t feel confident that we could do that on Blade, and we didn’t want to do that to Mahershala and didn’t want to do that to us.”
Wesley Snipes actually reprised his role as Blade in Deadpool & Wolverine with a show-stealing cameo. Meanwhile, Mahershala Ali hasn’t appeared on camera as Blade yet, but his voice was heard in the post-credits stinger scene of Eternals.
Blade was originally scheduled to release in 2025 before being pushed back and then removed from Marvel’s schedule indefinitely. The studio just kicked off Marvel Phase 6. For more, check out our guides to upcoming Marvel movies and shows and how to watch the Marvel movies in order.
