Marvel’s Blade reboot may have found its director

It’s relatively rare for Marvel Studios to go back on one of its big announcements, with even canned projects like the Inhuman movie get reused in another form, but it wouldn’t have been this surprising if Marvel has finally decided to quietly abandon its plans to a new Blade movie with Mahershala Ali like the eponymous Daywalker. After all, it’s been two years since this Too Good to Be True cast was announced, and then there was this whole global pandemic that hijacked every plan that anyone – even the almighty Marvel Studios – had made, so there it was. would have been understandable for Marvel or Ali to have doubts about something that could be very cool, but that would also put everyone involved under a lot of pressure to live up to the greatness of Blade and Blade 2.

But, apparently, someone really believes that we deserve beautiful things, because the new Blade the movie is still in the works and it might even have a promising, promising director. It comes from Deadline, who says independent filmmaker Bassam Tariq, who had only directed short films and documentaries before his feature film last year starring Riz Ahmed with Mughal Mowgli– is Marvel’s choice to face Blade. Deadline says there’s no deal in place yet, but apparently Marvel was really interested in the ‘vision’ he presented in some meetings this year with Ali and Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige . Stacy Osei-Kuffour, who worked on Watchmen and PEN15, writes the script.

The next question Marvel will need to answer is “What are you doing about Wesley Snipes?” Blade was a comic book character long before he appeared in the movies, but Snipes’ version of the character is up there with the most iconic takes of any character. He clarified during the announcement of Ali’s casting that he was pretty cool with everything that happened, although he shared a clip on Twitter of his blade saying that “some motherfuckers are still trying to ice skate uphill,” so it seemed his magnanimity was at least in part from knowing that Marvel knows that he will have to convince people that he is doing well by Blade and that one of the ways to achieve this is to do well by Wesley Snipes. Also: what are the chances of someone in this movie saying “motherfucker?”