Blade Cancelled? A Timeline of Marvel’s Most Delayed Movie

Is this the final nail in the coffin for the Daywalker? Disney has removed Marvel Studios’ Blade movie from its 2025 release calendar and slotted Predator: Badlands for Nov. 7, 2025, leaving the Mahershala Ali-led reboot without a release date. Originally slated for Nov. 3, 2023 before being pushed back to Sept. 6, 2024, and then Feb. 14, 2025 (once reserved for the Fantastic Four reboot before Disney moved Captain America: Brave New World onto that date), Marvel’s Blade staked out the late 2025 release date last November when Disney reshuffled its movie release calendar to move up Deadpool & Wolverine from May to July 2024 and push Thunderbolts* from 2024 to 2025.

“For the last few years, as we’ve been trying to crack that movie, the most important thing for us is not rushing it,” Marvel Studios President and producer Kevin Feige explained in a recent interview with BlackTreeTV. “And making sure we are making the right Blade movie, because there were some great Blade movies years ago.”

“We are committed to the movie, and we’re so committed to it that we’re not going to make it until it’s right,” Feige added. “[It] has been frustrating for us and for some fans that it’s taken a while, but we have a writer working on it now.”

Meanwhile, Wesley Snipes, who starred as the half-vampire, half-human vampire slayer in New Line Cinema’s Blade trilogy between 1998 and 2004, reprised his role in Deadpool & Wolverine earlier this summer and quipped that “there’s only been one Blade… and there’s only ever gonna be one Blade.” Excluding Ali’s voice-only cameo in a post-credits scene in 2021’s Eternals, that’s been true thus far.

Is Blade cancelled, or will Ali’s Daywalker have his day in the sun in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Here’s the timeline of every Blade delay so far:

July 23, 2011: Marvel regains the Blade movie rights
At San Diego Comic-Con in 2011, Marvel’s chief creative officer, Joe Quesada, confirmed the company regained the rights to Blade and The Punisher after licensing the characters out to New Line Cinema and Lionsgate, respectively.

May 2, 2013: Kevin Feige confirms Blade is back at Marvel Studios
As Iron Man 3 launched Phase Two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Feige once again confirmed that Blade was with Marvel Studios — along with Punisher, Ghost Rider, and Daredevil.

“Whenever a character comes back to us, it’s usually because the other studios don’t want to make the movies anymore — and that usually means the [previous] movies may not have been particularly well received,” Feige told Entertainment Weekly at the time. “They all have potential, but we’re not going to say, ‘We got it back — make it!’”

June 26, 2017: Kevin Feige teases bringing Blade into the MCU “someday”
“We think it would be cool. Someday,” Feige said in a 2017 interview with Joblo. “My tenure at Marvel started 17 years ago, and there were two things that sort of launched the modern era. One was X-Men, which was the first thing that people said, ‘Oh, there’s life here.’ But a few years before that, there was Blade. A character nobody had heard of at all, had only appeared in a few issues of Tomb of Dracula or something, turned into a big franchise.”

“That was always a great lesson for me, where you go, ‘It doesn’t matter how well known the character is, it matters how cool the movie is,’” Feige continued. “Which, many years later, would be the reason we do Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange. I think Blade is a legacy character now, and I think it would be fun to do something with him one day.”

July 20, 2019: Marvel Studios announces Blade reboot with Mahershala Ali starring
After officially announcing the feature films The Eternals, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Black Widow, Thor: Love and Thunder, and the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, WandaVision, Loki, and Hawkeye, Marvel Studios ended its San Diego Comic-Con Hall H presentation by bringing out two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali.

Feige announced the actor would play the eponymous hero in Marvel’s Blade reboot, and in a post-panel interview, told The Hollywood Reporter that Ali called Marvel Studios after winning his second Oscar for Green Book. “When Marhershala calls, you answer,” Feige said. During their meeting, Feige recalled, Ali “came right out and said that he wanted to do Blade.”

October 1, 2020: Mahershala Ali reveals Blade was being developed as a TV series
In 2006, New Line took a stab at a Blade television series with Blade: The Series, starring Sticky Fingaz (a.k.a. Kirk “Sticky” Jones) in the title role. Set in the same continuity as the trilogy, the series ran for just 13 episodes.

“I did this Marvel show for Netflix called Luke Cage. So in doing that show, the day it premiered, I had turned to my agent, and I had said, ‘What are they doing with Blade?’ Because I kept hearing they were trying to find a way to remake and put it back together,” Ali said on The Tight Rope podcast. “And it was exciting for me to get to be in that Marvel space and TV, but for me, my goal had always been film. But also being able to participate in television in a very specific way that had real meaning, but my larger goal was to be able to really navigate between film and television.”

There was “a long process of them speaking about, at least in the television division, really wanting to make it a TV show again,” Ali recalled. “Since they were having conversations about bringing it back into being, I just wanted to be considered for [Blade] because I had definitely a connection, at least in my mind, to Wesley Snipes going back to high school … I just brought it up as someone who really wanted to take on that [Blade] role and tackle that.”

October 23, 2020: Marvel looking for writers
THR reported Marvel Studios was seeking Black behind-the-camera talent for Blade.

February 5, 2021: Marvel hires Stacy Osei-Kuffour to write Blade
Stacy Osei-Kuffour, a two-time Emmy nominee whose credits include HBO’s Watchmen and FX’s The Bear, was tapped to write Blade for Marvel Studios.

May 5, 2021: Blade filming start date is pushed back for the first time
In 2021, THR reported that Marvel moved Blade from a planned September shooting start to July 2022 to give Osei-Kuffour more time to work on the script.

July 19, 2021: Marvel hires Bassam Tariq to direct Blade
Mogul Mowgli director Bassam Tariq was announced as director following reports that Marvel Studios had met with dozens of candidates since fall 2020.

September 1, 2021: Tariq reveals first details about Osei-Kuffour’s Blade script
In an interview with The Playlist, Tariq described the Osei-Kuffour-penned script as being character-focused. “Character is very important for me. I don’t think of genre, I think of character,” he said. “It’s not so boxed in as people imagine it to be [working with Marvel Studios]. It’s quite exciting. And I think the reality is there is no Blade canon, you know? If you ever read the comics, they’re always changing…Unfortunately, the [comic book series] never lasted that long.”

November 5, 2021: Blade sinks his teeth into the MCU… as a voiceover
Ali’s Blade debuted — off-screen — as a voiceover cameo in the post-credits scene ending 2021’s Eternals. In the scene, Dane Whitman (Kit Harington) goes to pick up the cursed Ebony Blade of medieval legend that transforms him into the Black Knight in the Marvel Comics when he’s stopped by a voice, which asks: “Sure you’re ready for that, Mr. Whitman?”

November 30, 2021: Eternals producer reveals cut Blade cameo, teases crossover
Eternals producer Nate Moore revealed one version of the post-credits scene would have seen Ali appear on-screen as Blade. “[Blade] was [part of the scene] for reasons hopefully that would become apparent as you see more things, but [Ali] wasn’t there on the day,” Moore told ComicBook. “And we talked about two versions of that, one where we would cut to him and one where we wouldn’t. ‘How textual do you want it to be?’ And again, it was more just for the fun of it, to tease it a little bit, to hear the voice and not see the man.”

“He was game to do it,” Moore added of Ali. “Because the characteristics of the Ebony Blade are not dissimilar to some degree to vampirism, and we think that’s an interesting kind of thing to play with. So, we kind of knew that was on the table.”

November 19, 2021: Blade casts Delroy Lindo
Malcolm X and Da 5 Bloods actor Delroy Lindo becomes the first cast member to join Ali in Blade.

January 7, 2022: Blade character descriptions leak online
In early 2022, leaked character descriptions revealed Marvel was casting a character codenamed “Abid,” described as “a burly, South Asian character who has taken a vow of silence after a turbulent life.” Additional characters included “Huntley,” a man aged 40-60, and “Faiza,” a “French-speaking North African female between 20 and 40.”

February 22, 2022: Aaron Pierre is cast in Blade
Krypton and Mufasa: The Lion King actor Aaron Pierre was cast in an undisclosed (and reportedly highly sought-after) role opposite Ali.

June 2, 2022: Blade cinematographer reportedly hired
Emmy-nominated cinematographer Damián García (Star Wars: Andor) was reportedly tapped to shoot Blade.

July 23, 2022: Marvel dates Blade for 2023
At San Diego Comic-Con — where Feige announced the movie three years earlier — Feige revealed an October shooting start and that Marvel Studios dated Blade for Nov. 3, 2023.

September 27, 2022: Blade loses director, hires Beau DeMayo as writer
Tariq exited Blade ahead of a fall production start “due to continued shifts in our production schedule,” a Marvel spokesperson said at the time, adding that Tariq would remain an executive producer on the film. It was also reported that Blade had undergone several rewrites by this point, with Marvel Studios bringing on Beau DeMayo (The Witcher, Marvel’s Moon Knight and X-Men ’97) to pen the current script.

October 11, 2022: Marvel announces new Blade release date
Marvel Studios shut down pre-production in Atlanta ahead of a November shooting start, and Disney pushed Blade from Nov. 3, 2023 to Sept. 6, 2024.

November 21, 2022: Marvel hires new Blade director and writer
Yann Demange (White Boy Rick, Lovecraft Country) signed on to direct, with Michael Starburry (When They See Us) brought on as writer.

February 14, 2023: Feige announces Blade’s new shooting date
“Cameras roll in, like, the next 10 weeks or so,” Feige told EW, putting the new start of production in May.

March 7, 2023: Blade cinematographer drops out
García was reportedly replaced as cinematographer. Three-time Oscar nominee Matthew Libatique (Black Swan, A Star Is Born, Maestro) — whose credits include 2008’s Iron Man, 2010’s Iron Man 2, and 2018’s Venom — was brought on to shoot Blade.

April 12, 2023: Mia Goth cast in Blade
Mia Goth — known for roles in Suspiria, X, Pearl, and MaXXXine — joined the cast in an undisclosed role suspected to be Lilith Drake, daughter of Dracula.

April 28, 2023: Blade taps Nic Pizzolatto to polish script
THR reported Pizzolatto, who worked with Ali on True Detective season 3, was brought on weeks earlier to rework Starburry’s script as the film headed toward a “late May” start of production.

May 5, 2023: Blade shuts down due to writers’ strike
Marvel Studios paused pre-production on Blade once again when the film became the first tentpole to be shut down by the 2023 writers’ strike. Although it was previously reported to begin filming in Atlanta in May 2023, the shooting start was pushed back to June.

June 13, 2023: Blade delayed again, new release date set
As part of a movie release schedule reshuffling, Disney moved Blade from Sept. 6, 2024 to Feb. 14, 2025.

November 1, 2023: Marvel taps Michael Green to rewrite Blade
Variety reported that Marvel Studios hired Michael Green, the Oscar-nominated writer of Logan and Blade Runner 2049, to rewrite Blade from scratch and that Disney was looking to make the movie on a budget of less than $100 million.


November 2, 2023: Blade writer refutes reports that Mahershala Ali was “fourth lead” in female-led reboot
After Variety reported that Blade “at one point morphed into a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons” and relegated Ali’s Blade to the background, and that the star was “ready to exit” the project, Starburry tweeted: “I worked on a draft of this before the strike. Never saw a version where Blade was 4th lead or it was a ‘narrative led by women and filled with life lessons’ but I suppose a lot could have happened since I had anything to do with it. He was in 99% of the scripts I was a part of.”

November 6, 2023: Marvel Studios’ Blade reboot confirmed to be rated R
Demange confirmed in an interview with Deadline that Marvel Studios “gave me the R [rating].”

November 9, 2023: Blade release date pushed back again
Marvel Studios’ updated release schedule shifted Blade from Feb. 14, 2025, to Nov. 7, 2025, with Captain America: Brave New World moving from July 26, 2024, to Blade‘s Valentine’s Day release date.

December 6, 2023: Ali updates Blade status
“We’re working on it. That’s the best I could tell you,” Ali told EW. “I’m really encouraged with the direction of the project. We’ll be back at it relatively soon.”

“I’m sincerely encouraged in terms of where things are at and who’s on board and who’s leading the way as far as the writing of the script and the directing and all that,” he added. “So that’s the extent of what I can tell you.”

March 17, 2024: Aaron Pierre reveals he dropped out of Blade
The rising star, who recently headlined Rebel Ridge for Netflix, revealed he was “no longer part of [Blade].” He’s since been cast as the John Stewart Green Lantern opposite Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan in DC Studios and HBO’s Lanterns, set in James Gunn’s new DC Universe.

May 30, 2024: Mahershala Ali joins Scarlett Johansson in Jurassic World 4
Ali was cast in Universal’s Jurassic World Rebirth, sparking speculation that his involvement would once again delay Blade. The new Jurassic World movie began shooting in June of this year and wrapped in September.

June 12, 2024: Yann Demange exits Blade as director
Demange dropped out of directing Blade before it was reported in the press. The studio then tapped Marvel Studios veteran Eric Pearson — whose credits include 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok, 2021’s Black Widow, and 2025’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps — to rework the script.

June 20, 2024: Delroy Lindo dropped out, Blade was a period piece
It was reported by THR that Lindo was “let go” along with Pierre, but Goth remained attached to star opposite Ali. The outlet also reported that the version of Blade that was supposed to shoot in 2023 with Demange took place in the 1920s with Goth set to play Lilith, an ancient demon-vampire goddess who “wanted the blood of Blade’s daughter.” The current version of Blade is said to take place in the present-day MCU.

October 22, 2024: Disney pulls Blade from its release schedule
On Oct. 22, Disney removed Blade from its release calendar and dated three untitled Marvel Studios movies for 2028. Disney slotted 20th Century’s Predator: Badlands onto the Nov. 7, 2025 date, leaving the director-less Blade undated. See the updated MCU slate through 2028.