Marvel Studios keeps trying to unsheathe
Blade, but the vampire thriller is stuck in its scabbard. The latest setback occurred in recent weeks when the feature
lost director Yann Demange, the second helmer to exit the project. Some sources say both sides grew frustrated by
Blade’s prolonged development process.
Star Mahershala Ali is also said to be increasingly frustrated. Ali, who has been attached to the project since 2019, handpicked Demange after the project lost director Bassam Tariq in September 2022. At the time,
Blade was in preproduction and about two months from principal photography, but Marvel came to believe that Tariq was not the best fit for the project, according to sources. Marvel then presented Ali with a list of directors for consideration, but Ali conducted his own search after having concerns that the list largely featured filmmakers who were untested at the big studio level.
Ali has, at times, exercised an inordinate amount of influence over the project, in a way few other actors have on Marvel movies. Part of it stems from
Blade’s inception, which began when Ali called the studio after winning the Oscar for his work on
Green Book and said he wanted to do
Blade. Ali has envisioned Blade as his
Black Panther, according to sources.
Demange’s
Blade was batting its wings toward a shoot starting in May 2023 and hired yet another writer,
True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto, also an Ali pick, to bring the script over the finish line. But it was all for naught, as the writers strike, then the actors strike, shut the movie down. “People have missed about three windows to shoot other movies or shows,” an agent notes.
But unlike several other Marvel projects that were shut down and then restarted — including
Deadpool & Wolverine and
Thunderbolts —
Blade instead let most of its actors go, Delroy Lindo and Aaron Pierre among them, and went through more writers. Marvel hired Michael Green in November. And right after Demange left, go-to Marvel writer Eric Pearson, who had pleased the studio with recent work on
Thunderbolts and
Fantastic Four, jumped in.