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If you had lost all hope of a Blade movie ever happening at the MCU, we have some good news. Marvel boss Kevin Feige has confirmed that the film is still in the works, with Mahershala Ali attached to star and a new "modern-day" setting being developed for the story. It's the most promising update we've had in ages.
Ahead of the highly anticipated release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps this weekend, Feige talked about the upcoming project, saying that the delays and production problems were a symptom of the franchise's "over-expansion" following the increase in streaming content for Disney+. Feige felt that "for the very first time ever, quantity trumped quality" (via Variety).
It seems like Blade got caught up in a challenging time for the MCU. The film was announced back in 2019 with an original release date scheduled for November 2023. Since then, the production has lost two directors, Bassam Tariq and Yann Demange, and the script has gone through several rewrites.
"We didn’t want to simply just put a leather outfit on him and have him start killing vampires. It had to be unique," Feige explained.
"It fell into the time when we started pulling back and saying, 'Only accept insanely great.' And it wasn't 'insanely great' at the time. We didn't feel like, as we often do, you can have a good script and make it a great script through production. We didn't feel confident that we could do that on Blade, and we didn't want to do that to Mahershala and didn't want to do that to us," he added.
With no director attached at the moment, Blade is now being rewritten by Fantastic Four and Thunderbolts* writer Eric Pearson with a totally new approach. "We've landed on modern day," Feige revealed.
Previous versions of the script were set in the past, with one reportedly set in the Prohibition Era. As Feige and his team decided the movie was going to be set in the present, the period costumes created by Oscar-winner Ruth E. Carter ended up being used for Ryan Coogler's Sinners.
Next up for the MCU is The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which arrives in theaters on July 25 as part of Marvel Phase 6. For more, get up to speed with our guide on how to watch the Marvel movies in order, or look ahead to the other upcoming superhero movies on the way.
