One of the more exciting projects Marvel has in the pipeline right now is a reboot of Blade (currently titled Blade, the Vampire Slayer) starring two-time Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali. There are no details on what exactly the studio has planned for the vampire hunter with Stacy Osei-Kuffour writing the script, but they are on the lookout for a director, and a new report from THR says they want a Black filmmaker to helm the project. According to THR, Marvel is looking over a similar list to the one Warner Bros. is using in deciding who should helm their upcoming Superman reboot where Ta-Nehisi Coates is writing the script and Kal-El will be Black.
For those that need a brief refresher on Blade, the 1998 film was part of the wave of films that helped jump start the new superhero boom alongside X-Men and Spider-Man. Stephen Norrington directed the first film, Guillermo del Toro handled Blade II, and David S. Goyer, who had written the first two Blade movies, handled directing duties on Blade: Trinity with Wesley Snipes starring as the Daywalker in all three films. Blade’s superpower is that because his mother was bitten by vampire when he was in the womb, he has the strengths of a vampire but also has the ability to walk in the daylight. Or as Stephen Dorff puts it in Blade, “All of our strengths, none of our weaknesses.”
The big question for Blade is how exactly he fits into the MCU because, you know, vampires. It’s one thing to have Blade off in his own little standalone universe where vampires are running around doing their own thing; it’s another to have it happening in the Marvel universe where it seems like superheroes are indifferent to the fact that there are bloodsucking monsters living among us and one guy has been tasked with taking on this threat to humanity. Perhaps these kinds of hurdles are why Marvel is still working on the script and pushed the start of production on the film from September back to July 2022.
As for who ultimately lands the directing job, Marvel has mostly made wise decisions thus far with its properties, and I’m fairly confident they’ll get someone exciting for the gig just like they hired Chloé Zhao for Eternals and Nia DaCosta for The Marvels. But with production now pushed back to July 2022, it will probably be a while before we know who’s taking the helm of Blade.
via Collider