By Andrew Sanford | News | February 3, 2025 |
You have to know when to give up. Even if something seems easy, you might not have all the ingredients to make it work. That’s OK! Not everything will work out how you planned because that’s how life works. Yes, you have a string of successes that feels unmatched, but there’s some failure in there as well. The important thing is that you know when to take a step back, look at something that isn’t working, and move on even if it means losing Mahershala Ali to other projects.
I’m talking to you, Kevin Feige!
We are months away from the fifth anniversary of Mahershala Ali being cast as Blade. Five years! It’s insane to think that Ali popped on that official Blade hat in Hall H before I had children. That’s the easiest way for me to measure time. Hell, we were still dealing with Trump’s first f***ing term when this news broke. However, the man has yet to appear in a Marvel film. He lent his voice to the end credits of The Eternals for … some reason, but that was it.
Production on the film has been anything but smooth. To date, it has gone through five writers we know of, and according to The Wrap, one more has just been brought on. The report mentions that Marvel is in no rush to make the film, as much as they are interested in getting it right. That makes sense! But how hard is it to do a rad movie about Mahershala Ali killing vampires with a sword? It’s hard enough that the film just lost another director.
Yann Demange is no longer attached to direct Blade after being announced almost three years ago. According to The Wrap, Demange amicably left the project some time ago. That’s nice, but still concerning. The film is still set to release later this year (laughter), which is likely not to happen, but no director being attached makes the project feel farther away than anticipated.
What makes this whole thing wilder is that a Blade has appeared in the MCU since the Mahershala announcement and it wasn’t him! Wesley Snipes reprised his take on the character for Deadpool Ampersand Wolverine. It was fun and honestly felt like they barely tried. They put Wesley in the suit, let him say cool stuff, and had him fight with a sword. It’s that easy. If you can’t do that, maybe it’s time to call it.