Blade Writer Reveals Behind-the-Scenes Meetings With Kevin Feige, Mahershala Ali, and More

Development continues on Marvel Studios’ reboot of Blade and a pair of now-deleted Instagram Stories reveal how deep into the weeds they are in working on the project. As spotted by The Direct, screenwriter Stacy Osei-Kuffour shared a pair of images of Zoom meetings between herself and several key Marvel creatives and personnel that are attached to Blade including Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, producer Eric Hausserman Carroll, producer Louis D’Esposito, director Bassam Tariq, and star Mahershala Ali. The outlet further noted that in one image Feige appears to be wearing his Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings hat, meaning these might be a little old. Check it out for yourself below.

Precious little is actually known about the Blade movie, all we know for sure is that Ali is attached and that it’s in the works. No release date or plot details have been confirmed for the project and the only other casting that’s even been reported for the movie is the addition of with Da 5 Bloods and The Harder They Fall star Delroy Lindo reportedly in talks. Marvel did give us a tease of Blade earlier this year though as Ali delivered a line off-camera in the mid-credits scene of this year’s Eternals, setting up his own movie but also perhaps an appearance by Kit Harington’s Dane Whitman aka The Black Knight.

Though only Ali’s voice can be heard, the actor previously revealed to Stephen Colbert on The Late Show that it kept him up at night.

“Like I was losing sleep over this line because, ideally, you want to be talking once you are filming,” the Oscar winner said. “And 100% of the times, my first day on any set, on any job, I hate it. Like, I hate how I sound, I don’t believe myself, you know, and so you’re trying to like get comfortable in the character. So to have to talk before you’re even actually filming was challenging, but I’m grateful for it, because it made it feel real. I made it… It’s like ‘Okay, now we’re going.’” 

“[Blade] was [part of the scene] for reasons hopefully that would become apparent as you see more things, but [Mahershal Ali] wasn’t there on the day,” Eternals producer Nate Moore explained on ComicBook.com’s Phase Zero podcast. “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. Because the Ebony Blade, 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.”  

Check back here for more details on Blade as we learn about it.