Is Marvel’s Mahershala Ali Blade movie ever going to see the light of day? Unfortunately, it’s looking more and more unlikely. The project was announced all the way back in 2019 but currently seems to be languishing in production hell, and now Wesley Snipes has weighed in.
First, director Bassam Tariq stepped down and Yann Demange took over, but now, Demange has left the film as well. What’s going on? That’s not even counting the amount of writers the project seems to have gone through.
Mahershala Ali’s Blade had a very quick voice cameo in the post-credits scene of Eternals in 2021, but three years have passed since then, and there’s seemingly not been a shred of positivity regarding the character making it once more to the big screen. People have been starting to ask, “Can it really be that hard to make a Blade movie?”
There’s been three of them already! All you need is a strong lead (already done) and some hardcore vampire-killing action. Blade even got the greenlight to go with an R rating, which is what fans wanted, but that was the last bit of real news before it got pushed back to November 7, 2025.
And now the star of the original Blade films, Wesley Snipes, has joined in with the internet’s roasting of the delayed Blade. He took to X (formerly Twitter) and wrote, “Blade, lordylordylordy folks still lookin for the secret sauce, ridin snowmobiles in traffic, kinda rough. Daywalkers make it look easy, don’t they?”
Blade is running out of time to make things work
The response to Snipes’ tweet was more of the same: incredulity that the MCU has put together all the ingredients needed for a Blade movie but just can’t make them into a meal.
Alas, the MCU has hit some snags lately, and a Marvel movie is far from the guaranteed hit it used to be. Disney CEO Bob Iger announced in May that the studio was going to start focusing on “quality over quantity,” and only one MCU movie is set to come out this year: Deadpool & Wolverine. It seems like Blade might have borne some of the brunt of this behind-the-scenes unsettlement.
Snipes, like the rest of us, is completely behind Ali taking over the title role of the franchise, however. Back in 2021, he said, “He will do great,” in response to a fan who said Ali would have a hard time living up to his predecessor. Unfortunately, it seems like we’re all going to be waiting a while to see just how great he’ll do.
Published: Jun 18, 2024 02:57 pm