Marvel’s Blade is currently set for release in November 2025, but nobody actually believes it’ll hit that date. We’ve joked a lot about the troubled superhero film, which was first announced at Comic-Con 2019 with star Mahershala Ali introduced as the new Daywalker. Five years later, the film is no closer to going anywhere. You could say it’s actually retreated backward a few steps following the loss of its second director, Yann Demange, just days ago.
A mountain of new details have emerged about Blade and behind-the-scene issues that have hampered it, almost right from the beginning. It’s become clear to any fan paying attention that Ali is creeping his way out the door, especially since he recently signed to star in a new Jurassic World movie. And according to an extensive THR piece, Ali has grown “increasingly frustrated’ by the delays, and has “exercised an inordinate amount of influence over the project, in a way few other actors have on Marvel movies.”
To that point, Ali was the one who conducted his own search for a director after the first, Bassam Tariq, exited Blade when Marvel thought he was a poor fit. Ali settled on Demange who had the “big studio level” experience he felt was needed. Since Ali saw Blade
“as his Black Panther”, it makes sense that he’d put so much energy into getting what he wanted.
After working with him on True Detective, Ali brought in Nic Pizzolatto to take a shot at the script, only for that to get derailed by the writers’ strike. There have been multiple writers on the film, six in total: Stacy Osei-Kuffour (Watchmen), Beau DeMayo (X-Men ’97), Pizzolatto, Michael Starrbury (When They See Us), Michael Green (Logan), and currently Eric Pearson, writer of Marvel’s The Fantastic Four. Amazingly, the script is to be rewritten AGAIN over the summer and then sent out to potential directors.
So with this many rewrites, the production has gone through many expensive changes that have blown up the budget of a once small-budgeted movie…and nothing has been shot yet. The report confirms rumors that Blade was to be set in the 1920s, which led to the building of a massively expensive train set that has gone unused. Disney might repurpose it for something else down the line so that money won’t go to waste.
The film is said to now be set in the present day, which makes more sense considering Blade was overheard in the Eternals post-credits scene, so there’s some MCU connectivity there to bank on. Plus, it’s probably less expensive.
All of these delays have played havoc with the casting, too. While Ali seems to have one foot out the door, he’s still there. So is Pearl and MaXXXine star Mia Goth, who remains attached to the role of Lilith, a villain seeking the blood of Blade’s daughter. Knowing that Blade’s child is in the film leads to the obvious question of who the child’s mother is, making for a potentially interesting story. Maybe it’s Lilith herself?
But what about other announced actors, Aaron Pierre and Delroy Lindo? Well, both have exited the film for different reasons. Pierre, known for his roles in Old and The Underground Railroad, left due to scheduling problems caused by the delays. Lindo might’ve had his role reduced or cut as a consequence of the many rewrites.
It seems that Blade could land sometime in 2026, assuming the ball gets rolling properly. But that’s a big “if”, because Marvel has clearly been trying their best for five years and nothing has happened. Why would that change now? Because fans are starting to express the same frustration as Ali? At this point, Blade is as likely to be scrapped for good as to in a theater near you anytime soon.
