Director Yann Demange to sink his teeth into Mahershala Ali’s Blade movie
Just a few months after a seemingly serious delay, the movie is back on track
Aux News Blade
Marvel Studios’ troubled Blade movie, with Mahershala Ali stepping in to play the iconic vampire slayer previously made famous by Wesley Snipes, seems to be back on track—and it happened pretty quickly, all things considered. It was only in September when director Bassam Tariq dropped out of the film, citing some kind of timing issue with the production schedule, which prompted Marvel Studios to put Blade on hold until it could find a new filmmaker to rework the project to their own sensibilities (which then led to a whole bunch of other Marvel movies being delayed in order to accommodate Blade being pushed back by nearly a whole year).
But now, a little more than a month after that, Marvel has hired White Boy Rick and Lovecraft Country director Yann Demange to take over. That comes from Deadline, which says Demange survived “weeks of meetings and pitches” and came up with an idea that Marvel executives “were excited about,” and while we don’t have any details, Deadline’s “insiders” says that the movie is going to be “darker” than the rest of the MCU but that it “won’t be as dark as the previous Blade pics.” Now, the previous Blade pics weren’t especially dark, unless you just count violence as “dark,” but that does probably put a stake in the heart of our dreams of hearing Ali’s Blade call someone a motherfucker. Oh well.
Also, in addition to Demange coming on board, the movie also has a new writer: Michael Starrbury, who worked on When They See Us. Blade, after that previous delay, will be in theaters on September 6, 2024, at which point we’ll hopefully get to see what Ali’s Blade looks like (he previously got a vocal cameo in Eternals, which was, let’s be honest, one of the more inexplicable things in an MCU movie).
13 Comments
Some motherfucker’s always tryin’ to ice skate uphill!
Disney version of Dark are mostly lighting environment (thanks to the Volume ambience) and some character try to curse but cut with other spectacle CGI scene.
Idk, I thought the Blade films were pretty dark. Parker Posey was weird/cute, I guess.Lovecraft Country was beautifully made so I think this will be good, but I’m still judging you against Wesley, Mr. Ali.
The actual making of ‘Blade: Trinity’ sounded like it got pretty dark.
Everything is dark if you refuse to open your eyes.
Everyone should check out his movie ’71, about a British soldier lost in a hostile Belfast during the Troubles. Its a fantastically tense, one crazy night style thriller.It also has the immortal line. “The army’s just posh cunts telling thick cunts to kill poor cunts.”
That’s a great movie! I worry a Marvel movie is not the direction he should go, given how lackluster they’ve been, but then again, I guess it hasn’t done much harm to other directors’ careers.
Thanks for the tip – I’ve never heard of ‘71 but it looks amazing. Gonna find it as soon as I can.I’m glad they got Blade going again; I think Ali is a great choice.
Oh he directed that ‘zombies takeover a reality show’ Dead Set! I remember liking that in the wayback years of 2008 or 09
i look forward to his announcement that he’s stepped away from the project due to creative differences.
The big issue I think they’re having with an MCU Blade movie is working around blood. When they say dark what they mean is depicting blood whether it be something that splatters or that a vampire drinks etc.
I mean the MCU seems big enough at this point that they can have an R-rated section with blood and gore. There’s still plenty of “family-friendly” violence to teach Americans that it doesn’t really mean anything when you shoot someone.
New director, new screenwriter. This will be (at least) the third script, and it doesn’t sound like it’s been written yet. But sure, they can have this in theaters in less than two years.