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UPDATE: In an interview with Collider.com, Marvel head Kevin Feige confirmed that the entire Phase IV has been announced. This means that Blade will not appear until Phase V or later. Check out his comments below:
“It is the complete Phase Four the way I announced the complete Phase Three five years ago—things can move, things can change as they did if you go back and look at what we talked about five years ago for Phase Three, but we’ve been working on this for quite a while and it’s pretty set. But there are always changes possible.”
One would assume that Blade, Captain Marvel 2, Guardians 3, The Fantastic 4, The X-Men, which Feige confirmed were also in development would be Phase V of the MCU but there is no official confirmation on thatbut it’s a safe bet.
UPDATE #2: In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel Head Kevin Feige revealed that it was Mahershala himself that came to Marvel and said that he wanted to be the iconic vampire slayer. Feiged commented, “When Mahershala calls, you answer,” At the meeting, Ali came right out and said that he wanted to do Blade. That was that.”
(Original Post) Well it looks like Wesley Snipes is officially out of a job as it was announced at the Marvel Studios Panel that actor Mahershala Ali is the new Daywalker Blade!
Snipes has stated that he was in talks with Marvel in returning to the role but it looks like the studio had other plans.
Ali is best known for the films Greenbook and Moonlight and is a two-time Academy Award winner so he’s going to bring some serious gravitas to the role. He also played Cottonmouth in Netflix’s Luke Cage and even though he was only in a handful of episodes, he certainly left his mark in the Marvel Universe.
Not much else was said about it and we don’t know if it will be film, television or streaming service for the half human- half vampire slayer but hopefully we get more 411 on the project sooner rather than later.
Snipes, of course, played Blade in three movies while he was replaced by rapper Sticky Fingaz for the short lived TV series.
The Spike TV series with Sticky wasn’t a rousing success but the trilogy of films that Snipes starred in from New Line Cinema made over $400 million at the world wide box office and pretty much made comic book movies cool when they weren’t supposed to be. Many still feel (as I do) that Snipes is the one and only true Blade but I also feel that Ali will bring that action drenched gravitas to the role. Hopefully Snipes can still be a part of the new franchise.
The soonest we will probably see Ali as Blade will be 2021 as he is not a part of Phase IV at this time. Feige did say that anything can change so I feel that we will be seeing the emergence of our new Daywalker sooner rather than later. After all, the man is a two time Oscar winner so I don’t think we should make him wait.
You can bet that I will be all over this and will bring you all the juicy details when they drop!
[…] has stated in an interview with ComicBook.com that he would be totally up for directing the planned Blade reboot starring Mahershala Ali. The news of the MCU film was announced last year at SDCC when cons […]