Blade Release Date May Have Accidentally Been Revealed in MCU Phase 4 Schedule Published by Marvel India

On Tuesday, the Marvel Studios India Twitter account shared the upcoming Marvel Studios Phase 4 film slate that includes what appears to be the incorrect date for the new Blade movie's release. The graphic included all of the known Phase 4 release dates for 2022, from Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness to The Marvels, and had Blade listed for release on October 7, 2022. ComicBook.com reached out to Disney for confirmation or comment. As the company tends not to respond to such requests, we're going to point out that the release date seems unlikely to be accurate for a few reasons.

The first is that Blade hasn't begun filming unless Marvel Studios is doing it entirely in secret, which seems unlikely. The second is that Marvel Studios has several dates for unrevealed upcoming movies on its release slate. October 7, 2022, isn't one of them. At least not anymore.

Marvel Studios did have October 7, 2022, on its schedule previously, but in May, without revealing which movie the date is for, pushed that date back a whole year until October 6, 2023. We can't confirm anything, but the most likely explanation is that Blade will release in October (When is better than the spooky season to release a vampire hunter movie?), but that release was delayed a year, from 2022 into 2023. Whoever is running Marvel Studios India's Twitter account either didn't get the memo or forgot about the delay. 

Marvel Studios announced at San Diego Comic-Con 2019 that it would reboot the Blade series as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Stacy Osei-Kuffour is writing the film, and Bassam Tariq will direct. Mahershala Ali will play the lead role after playing the villain Cottonmouth on Marvel Television's Luke Cage series on Netflix.

"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 previously told The Tight Rope. "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."

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.