Marvel Studios’ Blade is not moving forward to production following its long-delayed development and multiple director changes. The project was announced during the 2019 SDCC, with Mahershala Ali set to play the iconic Daywalker. Later, Bassam Tariq was tapped to direct the film, but he exited due to creative differences.
In a recent interview with TheWrap following the world premiere of Tariq’s directorial movie Mother Your Mother Your Mother, starring Ali, Tariq revealed new details about the original vision for the scrapped version of Blade.
The original draft of Stacy Osei-Kuffour’s Blade script was reportedly set largely in the 1920s and featured European vampires. It was also rumored to include multiple time jumps to different periods after the 1920s.
Tariq confirmed that his version of Blade was partially set in the 1920s. He said he worked on the Marvel movie for approximately a year and a half. During pre-production, he moved his family to Atlanta, where work on the film was already well underway. Ruth E. Carter served as the costume designer for Tariq’s version of Blade. When Carter went on to work on Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, she brought some of the unused costumes from Blade with her.
Tariq and Ali became closer after Tariq left Blade. However, during production, they bonded over their shared spiritual perspectives, fatherhood, and desire to see the project through. Ali told him, “I like to finish what I started.” Tariq never pitched Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother to Ali while they were developing Blade.
As Tariq remembered it, Ali told him, “I like to finish what I started.” Tariq said, “And there was something that we were starting, with these ideas and this stuff. Even though the film’s incredibly different from whatever we were doing with Blade, I think the ideas of what we wanted to talk about were very close to him and me, particularly when it comes to spirituality and fatherhood.”
He added, “I think we both wanted to make a kick-ass action movie, and how do we do it in a way where the violence has weight, and it also changes the story and character.” It was important that the action not be, in Tariq’s words, “a long guitar solo.”
Recently, in an interview with GQ, Ali called out Marvel for Blade never happening. Ali pointed out that Marvel had him under contract and had the financial resources to make the movie if the studio wanted to move forward. He said that if Marvel had wanted to make Blade, “we would’ve done the movie.”
“You had me under contract, they have billions of dollars, if they wanted to do the movie, we would’ve done the movie. So we’re not doing the movie. When I look at this and Blade, I couldn’t have done both, and the reason this even exists is because that project fell apart and Bassam had the time, space, energy, and focus to go and write this and then re-approach me. And I was able to use those skills that I had been working on for over a year training for Blade. In that way, I feel creatively redeemed on some level, just in my own journey between me, myself, and I. But I feel ready to move on from the Blade questions. Those questions are for them. They didn’t want to do it, so they should answer that question.”
There are reports that Marvel Studios is planning to feature Blade in Avengers: Secret Wars. Following his appearance in Secret Wars, Blade could then play a major role in the Midnight Sons movie in the MCU’s next phase, instead of appearing in a solo movie.
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