Веслі Снайпс у фільмі «Блейд» / Warner Bros.
Marvel started the «Blade» Marvel relaunch epic 6 years ago, regularly changing directors, writers and supporting cast — by this time, the film had lost its release date, provoking rumors of cancellation.
An interesting point is that the studio never acknowledged any problems with the new «Blade» — even when the original franchise’s screenwriter, David S. Goyer, offered to help the studio.
«My agent called Marvel and asked, “Do you need help?” They said: “We love you, but we think we’ve already figured it out, and the project is in good shape.”», — Goyer said Variety.
In order to understand how «good the project’s condition is, let’s recall the chronology: in 2019, at Comic-Con in San Diego, the studio announced the relaunch of «Blade» with Mahershala Ali and only in 2022 did production start; shooting was planned for October with Bassam Tariq, then something went wrong and as of June 2024, the film changed two directors and worked with the seventh or eighth screenwriter in a row. Until then, «Blade» had a release date of November 2025, which it eventually gave upnew «Predator» in October 2024.
Given Goyer’s interview recorded in May and his words about negotiations with Marvel «about eight months ago» — the conversation actually took place at a time when the studio was planning to change the dates. So the statements about the good state of the project are somehow hard to believe.
«I think Blade — is a relatively simple story», — Goyer said in another interview (via EW). «It’s not complicated. And I always think that when you take on a movie like this, you need to clearly understand what exactly it promises… I don’t know why it was so difficult. I have no idea why. I was sitting on the sidelines, and Mahershala Ali — is an amazing actor. I don’t know why».
The latest news about the relaunch came in April, when insiders wrote about the potential abolition of theand Flying Lotus, the company hired to compose the music, said that «Blade» seems «far from reality at this time».
There is an assumption that Ali will appear in the Blade iteration in the future «Avengers: Secret Wars»and if he does get a solo project, we can only guess at the plot: one of the canceled versions was set in the 1920s and featured «Scream Queen» Mia Goth as the villain, playing a vampire who thirsts for the blood of Blade’s daughter; while for another, Marvel built a huge train that was never used; in the latter, the action was moved to the present day.
The first Blade movie was released by New Line Cinema in 1998 and became the most successful in the series (the other two, released in 2002 and 2004, grossed $418.1 million excluding inflation). Interestingly, the actor from the original «Blade», Wesley Snipes, recently reprised his character in the movie «Deadpool and Wolverine», which broke the record for the longest career at Marvel.