Marvel Studios' Blade reboot has lost its director again as script woes resurface
Star Mahershala Ali is probably close to giving up now.
It's happening again! Marvel Studios has lost yet another director for its long-in-the-works Blade reboot, which still has Mahershala Ali attached to star. We'll be surprised if he's still around by the end of 2024 at this rate though.
It was only a few months ago that Ali himself offered a promising update regarding the script status of the movie, as Logan and Blade Runner 2049's Michael Green was working on a new version of the story. In spite of the encouraging news and rumors of a definitive production start date being locked, the project is now facing yet another wave of rewrites, and director Yann Demange (Lovecraft Country) isn't sticking around any longer.
The news arrived via The Wrap on June 12, confirming the filmmaker's exit as well as Black Widow and The Fantastic Four scribe Eric Pearson taking over a new draft of the script. "According to an insider with knowledge, getting “Blade” right is much more important than getting the film out," adds The Wrap's Umberto Gonzalez.
Demange was the second director attached the project, which originally had Mogul Mowgli director Bassam Tariq and Watchmen scribe Stacy Osei-Kuffour attached. That version of the movie was completely scrapped and led to Demange replacing Tariq and a new set of rewrites, the latest of which came from Green. Now, Pearson's involvement might signal a potentially safer approach to the story in order to finally getting the movie off the ground, given his healthy relationship with Marvel Studios across a variety of projects. As for Green, it seems that Feige and the producers weren't unhappy with his work on Blade, since he might now be attached to the upcoming and all-but-confirmed Midnight Sons movie instead.
If the Green/Midnight Sons rumors are confirmed, then the new rewrite of the Blade script probably isn't negative or a major road bump, but the loss of yet another director as the timeline is pushed once again is worrying. By now, Ali has already signed up to co-star in Gareth Edwards' Jurassic World movie, and it's easy to see him potentially giving up his once-dream Marvel project if it continues to run into obstacles and Marvel's current creative insecurities.
Blade is currently set to release on November 7, 2025, but don't get too excited for now.