Sunday Scaries: So What’s Going On With You, ‘Blade?’

Hi Blade. No, the other Blade. The one that just got removed from Marvel’s release schedule earlier this week. I saw that news and wanted to… check on you? See how you’re doing?

There’s no shame in needing to talk. Or just vent. I certainly wouldn’t fault you for that. It’s been a rough five-and-a-half years since you were first announced as an upcoming project in Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Things seemed to be going so well for you at first! Sure, it seemed like a fool’s errand to try to reboot a character made so iconic by Wesley Snipes, but if anyone could manage a fresh, invigorating take on the Daywalker, surely two-time Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali would be the man for it. And yes, it was a bit of an odd decision to hire Bassam Tariq to direct you after having only one narrative feature film to his name, but plenty of amazing action movies have been made by relatively inexperienced directors and he seemed to have some great ideas for where to take the character. How often do we see a mainstream superhero tentpole star a Muslim actor directed by a Muslim filmmaker? Never, basically. Plus, Stacy Osei-Kuffour was brought onboard to write the script, and she wrote some episodes of the amazing Watchmen series! You were all set for principal photography in October of 2022 and a theatrical release in November 2023! Let’s gooooooo woooooo hooooooo!

But then things went wrong. A lot of things. Tariq exited the project due to “continued shifts in our production schedule.” Then the film’s release was pushed back a year. Then the whole production was put on pause to find someone who actually wanted to helm the project, which they eventually did with ’71 director Yann Demange… until he exited last June. They still haven’t found a new director as far as I can tell, even after they announced a tentative release date of November 2025. Uh, better get a move on, then.

Oh, and Osei-Kuffour’s script has been heavily rewritten by Michael Starrbury, Beau DeMayo, Nic Pizzolatto, Michael Green, and Eric Pearson. And those are just the writers we know of. There have almost certainly been a dozen more uncredited script doctors who have been hired to frantically try to hammer out a coherent story while meeting all of Disney’s corporate mandates. If rumors are to be believed, some of those mandates were flat-out deranged – apparently, in keeping with their obsessive mission to populate the next generation of Marvel heroes with sassy twentysomething sidekicks who eventually spin off into their own solo projects, there was a push to relegate Blade himself to a supporting role. In the Blade movie. So that more time could be devoted to the development of a Shuri-type vampire hunter protégé in a “narrative led by women and filled with life lessons.”

Look, I’m no Tim Pool. I’m not going to whine and cry about “woke feminists at Disney ruining superheroes.” I love narratives led by women and filled with life lessons! But it’s weird to want to graft that onto a formula of “Cool Dude + Killing Vampires = Badass,” right? You don’t need to add much aside from gnarly new vampire designs to make that formula work. I love cheeseburgers, and I love ice cream sundaes. Trying to put them together seems kinda disgusting, though. The only possible rationale I can think of to explain this narrative focus is that someone in The Mouse’s c-suite realized that Ali isn’t exactly a young up-and-comer (then again, neither was Tobin Bell when he was tapped for Saw and he’s still truckin’…) and wanted to guarantee franchise longevity by adding a younger ingenue in a more prominent role.

But then again, who knows if that’s even true? Or if that was just one of many half-baked ideas that were briefly pursued and abandoned over the course of your development? You were supposed to take place in the 1920s, with an action sequence taking place on an expensive train set that ended up not being used when the entire plot was shifted to the far future and then again to the present day.

Then the WGA strikes happened. Which hindered a lot of productions, to be fair. But in a notoriously troubled one like yours? That just adds a two-ton weight to all the existing problems you were dealing with. Deadpool & Wolverine was also delayed by the strikes and it was able to be completed and released after those strikes concluded. Meanwhile, as soon as a deal was reached, you cut Delroy Lindo and Aaron Pierre from the cast. Remember, you were announced five years ago. To put this into perspective, Guardians of the Galaxy was officially announced at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con and released in theaters two years later.

So what’s going on with you, Blade? Kevin Feige himself cites the original 1998 movie as an inspiration for him to take a risk on producing movies centering lesser-known superhero characters like Iron Man. He clearly has a special place in his heart for you. But heart only goes so far in late-stage capitalist Hollywood and a movie studio currently over-producing all of their IP “content,” and it seems like you’re the latest victim of that.

I hope things work out for you in the end, Blade. Call me if you want to talk. I cannot stand Marvel Studios and our continued oversaturation of superhero franchises… but I did feel like you had potential.

I hate to see it being squandered like this by forces outside of your control.