'True Dectective' Creator Nic Pizzolatto Now Writing The 'Blade' Reboot

He joins Michael Starburry who has done the major rewrites of the Mahershala Ali starrer

Nic Pizzolatto, the creator of the HBO crime anthology True Detective, has boarded Marvel Studios’s Blade reboot to write.

The film stars Mahershala Ali as the vampire hunter, thus making it a reunion with Pizzolatto, as Ali starred in the third season of True Detective with Stephen Dorff. It was a season where Pizzolatto directed for the first time, doing so for one episode while being the showrunner and the season’s primary writer, having co-written episodes where he wasn’t the sole writer. He is also the screenwriter for the 2016 version of The Magnificent Seven, and currently writing and executive producing the series adaptation developing at Amazon Studios.

Blade is set to start production toward the end of this month in Atlanta. Yann Demange, whose directing experience includes that of another HBO show, the pilot for Lovecraft Country, is directing the film, having been brought on after the departure of Bassam Tariq. The cast also includes Delroy Lindo, Mia Goth, and Aaron Pierre. The current script comes from Michael Starrbury, an Emmy-nominated writer of an episode of When They See Us whose draft Pizzolatto is working off and has been for a few weeks now.

Blade was originally a supporting character by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan, first appearing in Tomb of Dracula No. 10 in 1973. He is a vampire-hunting human-vampire hybrid thanks to his mother being bitten and killed by a blood-sucker during childbirth. The character was previously adapted to film for a trilogy released by New Line Cinema with Wesley Snipes in the role. The new iteration of Blade is scheduled to be released on September 6, 2024.

Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline