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In a move that's a surprise to absolutely no one, Marvel has taken Blade off of its 2025 release schedule, leaving the vampire flick in limbo

It's not like the writing was on the wall or anything.

Blade is stood on a city street in the rain, sword covered in blood, baring his teeth.
Image credit: Marvel

We all saw this one coming, but Marvel has officially taken Blade off of its November 7, 2025 release date.

It's been no secret that, for some reason, Marvel hasn't quite been able to get its footing when it comes to Blade. The film was first announced five years ago, with Mahershala Ali in the title role, and a few years later Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige even confirmed the film was going to be out in 2023. That obviously never happened, and over the years the directing and screenwriter roles changed hands so many times it's not worth listing them all out, but the most recent director attached Yann Demange left back in June, with Eric Pearson joining the project to work on the film's script. And now, Marvel has taken it off of its 2025 release date, with no new release date in tow, clearly showing there isn't much confidence in it right now.

If you were desperate to see a film on the exact release day of November 7, 2025, there is some good news at least, as Disney has opted to release 20th Century Studios' Predator Badlands on that day instead. This one comes from Dan Trachtenberg, who previously helmed 2022's Prey, a prequel Predator film set in 1719 focused on a young Comanche woman. I'm sure Badlands will make it up to all the cinemagoers that wanted to watch possibly a bit too much violence unfold on the big screen.

While it has been a good 20 years since the last official Blade film, Blade: Trinity, the actor that originally played him Wesley Snipes did appear as the character once again in this year's Deadpool & Wolverine. That particular MCU outing was a big send up to several Marvel films produced at Fox, and went on to gross $1.3 billion at the box office, making it the highest grossing R-rated movie of all time - the upcoming Blade is set to be R-rated too, but with all these hiccoughs, we'll just have to see how it does.

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