Marvel's Blade Rated R, Director Confirms
Marvel Studios' Blade reboot will be R-rated.
Marvel's Blade will have bite. Director Yann Demange confirms that the reboot, which stars Mahershala Ali as the sword-wielding vampire hunter, will be rated R. (Wesley Snipe's Blade trilogy also received the R rating for bloody violence, gore, and language.) Disney's Marvel Studios hasn't yet sunk its teeth into R-rated superhero fare — it typically opts for PG-13 — but with Daredevil, Punisher, and Blade on the way, Marvel is venturing into more mature territory. (Echo will be the first Marvel Studios series produced for Disney+ to receive the TV-MA rating, and the upcoming Deadpool 3 will maintain the former Fox franchise's explicit tone with the Marvel Cinematic Universe's first R-rated film.)
"They gave me the R, which is so important," Demange told Deadline in an interview about his Toronto Film Festival short Dammi, about a man's (Riz Ahmed) search for his cultural identity. Demange's semi-autobiographical short film is also about an outsider: Ali plays the "Daywalker" Eric Brooks, the half-human/half-vampire who has the powers of vampirism but none of the weaknesses.
According to Demange, the MCU Blade will be no less ruthless or violent than Snipes' leather trenchcoat-clad, vampire-slaying superhero.
"I come out of [Dammi] wanting to be more open, more vulnerable and bring a more personal aspect to my work," he said. "But for Blade, we are going to have fun because Mahershala is such a deep actor. I'm excited to show a kind of ruthlessness, a roughness he has, that allows him to walk the earth in a particular way. I love him for that. He's got a dignity and integrity, but there is a ferocity there that he usually keeps under the surface. I want to unleash that and put it on the screen."
Demange confirming Blade's R rating comes after news that producer Kevin Feige tapped Oscar-nominated writer Michael Green —whose credits include the R-rated Blade Runner 2049, Alien: Covenant, and the gritty and gory Wolverine movie Logan — to rework the Blade script. A recent report also suggested that the studio behind such expensive superhero fare as The Marvels has budgeted Blade below $100 million, which is in the neighborhood of what Fox spent making its R-rated X-Men spinoffs Deadpool and Logan.
Marvel Studios' Blade is currently scheduled to release in 2025.
