It may seem cursed to never see the light of day (or, more fittingly, night), but Marvel's Blade reboot is apparently very much still on the table, according to CEO Kevin Feige.
According to a meeting with press at Marvel’s Burbank HQ last Friday, the Mahershala Ali-starring vampire superhero flick is still part of the production giant's seven-year plan, despite a number of teething problems. First announced by Feige all the way back in 2019 at San Diego Comic Con, Marvel's Blade was set to see Ali play the vampire-human hybrid first originated on-screen by Wesley Snipes in 1998. The project went on to add, and lose, both Bassam Tariq and Yann Demange as directors, with True Detective‘s Nic Pizzolatto said to be rewriting a draft script from Michael Starrbury (When They See Us.)
Also attached to star were scream queen Mia Goth (X, Pearl) and Delroy Lindo (Sinners), with an original release date of November 3, 2023 bumped to September 6, 2024, then to February 14, 2025, and then to November 7, 2025, before Blade was removed from the release schedule entirely in October 2024.
According to Feige on Friday, there were at once four versions of Blade in the works, with one of them set in the 1930s (which would explain why Ryan Coogler's Sinners made use of the unused costumes), but now “we landed on modern day and that’s what we’re focusing on.”
So why the hold-up? Feige stated that “we didn’t want to put a leather outfit on [Ali] and have him start killing vampires” (which, personally, seems pretty baffling to us because surely that's exactly what we want from a good Blade reboot?):
“You can start and have a good script and make it a great script through production, but we didn’t feel confident we could do that on Blade […] We didn’t want to do that to Mahershala and didn’t want to do that to us.”
According to Comscore, there are untitled Marvel movies set for release on July 23, 2027, Feb. 18, 2028, May 5, 2028, Nov. 10, 2028 and Dec. 15, 2028. Could Blade be one of these mysterious projects? Only time will tell.
