Boardroom breaks down how the new version of the fan-favorite series failed to make it to the box office.
While the Russo Brothers were advising fans to pay attention to Avengers: Doomsday campaign, the Hollywood scoop community was buzzing over reports that Marvel has abandoned the solo Blade project that Mahershala Ali was set to star in. Any indication that this film, which was announced back in 2019, was no longer a priority at Marvel shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s been a decade of start-stop work to get that film off the ground, fueled by the box office behemoth’s attempts to reboot the daywalker franchise with two-time Oscar winner Ali.
“Blade is dead,” Jeff Sneider, founder of The InSneider, said on The Hot Mic. “I’m hearing Blade is dead and that it is a Midnight Sons movie. He will not be introduced in a solo movie. He’ll be introduced in Midnight Sons.” (In the Marvel comic universe, the Midnight Sons are a collective featuring Blade, Morbius, and both Ghost Riders, Danny Ketch and Johnny Blaze. The Ghost Rider of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is based on the latest Ghost Rider in the comics, Robbie Reyes, and there is a Morbius in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. This could happen, although those seeds would need to be sown.) Interestingly enough, another “insider,” James Mack, tweeted that Sneider was “acting crazy,” imploring that “Blade was definitely not canceled!” With no official word from Marvel to back either story, real heads already knew something was awry when Marvel removed Blade from its 2025 slate back in 2024 without giving it a new one. And that happened after Ryan Reynolds’s plea for Marvel to give Wesley Snipes’s Blade a Logan-style send-off. The writing’s been on the wall.
Here’s a look at the tumultuous trek Blade has made from the top of Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige’s pile to the “to be determined” bin.
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THE BACKSTORY
The official Blade-in-the-MCU story may have started in the summer of 2019, when Marvel first announced the film, but Mahershala Ali’s Blade project actually dates back to 2016—around the debut of Marvel’s Luke Cage series on Netflix, where Ali captivated viewers as the cutthroat Cottonmouth.
“In doing that show, the day it premiered,” Ali recalled, “I had turned to my agent, and I had said, ‘What are they doing with Blade?’ Because I kept hearing they were trying to find a way to remake and put it back together.” At a panel later that year, Feige was asked about Blade and offered some insight into how they initially planned to introduce the half-human-half-vampire vampire hunter. “Between the movies, the Netflix shows, the ABC shows, there are so many opportunities for the character to pop up as you’re now seeing with Ghost Rider on AGENTS of S.H.I.E.L.D. that rather than team up with another studio on that character, let’s do something on our own.” Ali had a slightly different vision, one that was darker than the superhero films Marvel was making at the time: “For me, my goal had always been film. But also being able to participate in television in a very specific way that had real meaning, but my larger goal was to be able to really navigate between film and television.” It sounds like they are reading from the same book, if not the same page.
It’s not like Marvel wasn’t already thinking about retooling Blade for the MCU. They regained the theatrical rights to Blade in 2011—following the New Line Cinema’s iconic trilogy that was led by a Method AF Wesley Snipes—and there was rumored to have been a Blade script at Marvel from their writing program as far back as 2013. Snipes even discussed the talks he’d had with Marvel back in 2015 about a potential fourth Blade film, saying it’d be nice to “be a part of the family again.” But it wasn’t until Ali entered the picture that Blade being in the MCU truly started to take shape.
In 2017, Ali won his first Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work in Moonlight. Two years later, he picked up another Best Supporting Actor Oscar, this time for Green Book. While Feige hasn’t gone on record to say that Mahershala Ali with an Oscar in each hand was how Blade got the green light, but it only took about six months after Ali’s second Oscar win for Marvel to make…
THE ANNOUNCEMENT
During Disney’s D23 Expo in July 2019, Marvel took over Hall H to unveil their plans for Phase Four of the MCU. They announced a lineup that featured Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and She-Hulk, setting the stage for Marvel’s most ambitious (and polarizing) phase to date. To top it off, Marvel revealed that Two Oscars Ali would be the lead in Blade, with no attached director or writer, and no set release date.
Just announced in Hall H at #SDCC, Marvel Studios’ BLADE with Mahershala Ali. pic.twitter.com/JPcrSqSerW
— Marvel Entertainment (@Marvel) July 21, 2019
What they did have were plenty of ideas and goals. Rumors circulated that Blade was aiming to have a predominantly Black crew behind the scenes, and that Ali had “an unusual amount of control over Blade since its very inception.” Marvel was deliberate in its director selection, hoping for someone in the vein of Steven Caple, Jr. (Creed II) or Albert Hughes (Menace II Society); the film’s first director, Bassam Tariq (Mogul Mowgli), exited in September 2022, causing production delays. After Tariq’s exit, X-Men ‘97 creator Beau DeMayo was brought in to rewrite the script, turning the film into a period piece that would have featured the legendary Delroy Lindo and Mia Goth, with costuming by the Oscar-winning Ruth E. Carter. When that project fell under heavy delays—including the Hollywood strikes—Carter was contacted by Ryan Coogler’s wife, Zinzi, about the film that eventually became Sinners. Marvel eventually sold the costumes to Coogler for Sinners, signaling that they were abandoning this iteration of Blade.
After completing another exhaustive search, the decision was made to hire Yann Demange (White Boy Rick) to direct. They even brought in Nic Pizzolatto—the True Detective creator who worked with Ali on Season 3 of the HBO series—to work on a leaner version of the script, but Demange left the film in July 2024 due to production shifts. With ongoing delays and industry strikes, Blade’s release date unsurprisingly moved multiple times, eventually going from a November 3, 2023, release date as part of Phase Five of the MCU to November 7, 2025, placing it in Phase Six.
In a July 2025 interview with Deadline, Feige confirmed that four different Blade films had been in development, with the current focus being on a modern-day story. “You can start and have a good script and make it a great script through production, but we didn’t feel confident we could do that on Blade,” Feige admitted.
THE PROBLEM
Why can’t Marvel and Mahershala give Blade a lifeline? It’s likely due to what the kids call “doing the most.” When Ali first entered the MCU as Cottonmouth, it was a different world for Marvel Studios. This was also before the launch of Disney Plus. Before Disney premiered its own streaming service, the studio reportedly spent $200 million, all in, on Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and The Defenders. That sounds like a lot until you learn that Disney reportedly spent $225 million on the nine-episode season of WandaVision. The investment just wasn’t the same.
The Defenders heroes they were cultivating on Netflix were set in the MCU, but the series never actually felt like they coexisted in the same universe as the films, which were growing more popular with each release. That said, this was before Black Panther or Infinity War. This was before Captain Marvel. Not to say Marvel had an agenda, but with their success, Marvel made attempts to center films around women and superheroes of color. Once Mahershala got that second Oscar, Marvel may have figured it was time to lock him in before somebody else makes him the face of their franchise.
The problem? Marvel was still cooking. Remember, this Blade film announcement came about three months after the release of Endgame. The MCU was peaking and didn’t know it was about to crash, so it isn’t surprising that their M.O. was giving fans IOUs on the heroes they’ve been waiting to join the fold. Without a proper plan on how to integrate a character like Blade—portrayed by an actor like Mahershala—you end up, well, where Marvel ended up. With a lot of money spent (Marvel built a whole train set that they wanted to sell like they did those costumes) and nothing to show for it.
Well, not nothing, exactly. Blade did make a few appearances in the MCU after the D23 announcement in 2019. There was the post-credits scene in Eternals, where you can hear (Mahershala Ali as) Blade giving Dane Whitman a warning.
The aforementioned Wesley Snipes crossed the Multiverse to lend a hand in Deadpool & Wolverine, getting a lot of screentime and that push from co-star Ryan Reynolds to bring his version of Blade back.
Blade even made an appearance this year in Marvel Zombies as the Black Knight, voiced by Todd Williams.
Ali did not voice the animated Marvel Zombies Blade due to “timing,” which makes sense. Since the announcement of Blade, Mahershala has reprised his voice role as Aaron Davis in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, acted alongside Julia Roberts, and been one of the faces of the latest film in the Jurassic Park franchise. Ali even worked with Bassam Tariq, starring in Tariq’s next film, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. This means that, unless Sneider’s Midnight Sons rumor bears fruit, a decade has passed without Mahershala Ali portraying Blade onscreen. With the way Marvel is rolling, we are about to be under the spell of Doom for the foreseeable future. Earth’s Mightiest Heroes could use someone like Blade on their side. Hopefully, Marvel Studios isn’t too busy trying to ice skate uphill to recognize the Oscar-winning talent that’s been itching to inhabit the Daywalker.
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