Marvel Studios’ 'Blade' Removed From Release Schedule As 2028 Gets Staked
Marvel Studios’ 'Blade' Removed From Release Schedule As 2028 Gets Staked
Guess now’s a better time to talk about what star Mahershala Ali has been doing in the meantime as the film fails to take off
In this summer’s Deadpool & Wolverine, which featured Wesley Snipes reprising his role as Marvel’s vampire hunter from his trilogy of New Line Cinema films, it was said there’s only one Blade, and there’s only ever gonna be one Blade. The wink Deadpool gave may take on a whole new context if it wasn’t thought of already. Marvel Studios’s attempt at a starring film for the iteration of the character Mahershala Ali was cast to play has been taken off the schedule.
First announced in 2019 at the studio’s San Diego Comic-Con Hall H panel, Blade was last scheduled to be released on November 7, 2025, and no longer will, having been unable to start production, starting with the delays brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally it was Bassam Tariq was to direct, with a Stacy Osei-Kuffour script, but they left two months before production was supposed go begin. Yann Demange was then hired as director in November 2022 and Michael Green was hired as screenwriter by this past November. Reportedly there are at least three other writers, including Michael Starrbury, whose draft Nic Pizzolatto was working off of last we heard. But Demange left too. It is unknown if the early drafts written by Beau DeMayo, who the studio cut ties with following his work on the first two seasons of the X-Men ‘97 animated series, count here. And then came the dual strikes of the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, significantly delaying cracking a new script, and they wouldn’t proceed without there being a script. While the 2025 slate is down to three films with no guarantee of replacement, Marvel Studios has officially ventured into 2028, laying claim to February 18, 2028, May 5, 2028 and November 10, 2028 without putting any names to it.
What’s taking Blade’s place on that November 7, 2025 date? We’re bringing the Predator franchise back to theaters where it belongs. Following the well-received Prey’s release straight-to-Hulu in 2022, it was widely accepted it would’ve done well in theaters. It was nominated for the Outstanding TV Movie Emmy however, because the lines are very blurred with streaming. It even lost to Chip n Dale: Rescue Rangers. Its probable theatrical success is something reinforced by this year’s Alien: Romulus, the first installment of that franchise made since Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox. That film has made $350 million worldwide on an $80 million budget. The next Predator movie is not a Prey sequel, but Dan Trachtenberg does return to direct and co-write the newest installment, Predator: Badlands, starring Elle Fanning, which takes the date. Patrick Aison is the other co-writer. The film’s plot is rather unknown, other than “While traversing a wasteland, two sisters discover their horrifying past.” Only Fanning’s casting was confirmed when principal photography began.
Of course, over these several years, what has Ali its star been doing? Well, he joined the next installment of the Jurassic World franchise, as it goes into a second phase under the World titling, moving on from Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard and onto Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Bailey. It was made pretty fast to meet a July 2, 2025 release date, and the title was revealed to be Jurassic World: Rebirth. It is directed by takes place 5 years after the first World trilogy. The synopsis describes that “only a limited number of dinosaurs remain and live in specialized biospheres.” Three of them are crucial to forming a potentially life-saving drug. Covert operations expert Zora Bennett (played Johansson) attempts to secure the genetic material from the dinosaurs, Instead she ends up stranded with a civilian family, “whose boating expedition was capsized by marauding aquatic dinos,” on an island that contains a secret kept from humanity for decades. Ali plays Duncan Kincaid, Zora’s team leader, while Rupert Friend plays Martin Krebs, the representative of the drug conglomerate funding the expedition. Bailey plays paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis, while Philippine Velge, Bechir Sylvain and Ed Skrein play the rest of Bennett and Kincaid’s team. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono, and Audrina Miranda. David Koepp, who wrote the first two Jurassic Park films writes Rebirth while longtime producers Frank Marshall and Patrick Crowley return to produce. Steven Spielberg, Denis L. Stewart and Jim Spencer serve as executive producers.
