This bites. Disney has announced that Marvel Studios’ Blade, starring Mahershala Ali as the vampire hunter, has been delayed by nine months from February 14th, 2025, to November 7th, 2025. Disney — reshuffling its movie release calendar for the third time this year — also pushed Deadpool 3 (from May 2024 to July 2024), Captain America: Brave New World (from July 2024 to February 2025), and Thunderbolts (from December 2024 to July 2025). Outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mufasa: The Lion King moved from next summer to Christmas 2024, while two untitled Disney movies — set for July 2025 and November 2025 — were removed from the schedule to accommodate the new 2025 dates for Thunderbolts and Blade.
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Blade was originally dated for November 3rd, 2023. After losing director Bassam Tariq, the Bladereboot shifted again: this time to September 6th, 2024. In May, MarvelStudios shut down pre-production due to the writers strike.
Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige announced two-time Oscar winner Ali would play the half-human, half-vampire superhero at San Diego Comic-Con in 2019. During that same presentation, Feige officially unveiled Marvel’s slate of Black Widow, Eternals, Thor: Love and Thunder, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and the Disney+ series WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, What If…?, and Loki; of these projects, only Blade has yet to be released.
The troubled production has gone through at least six writers, including Tariq, Stacy Osei-Kuffour (HBO’s Watchmen), Beau DeMayo (Marvel’s Moon Knight and X-Men ’97), Michael Starrbury (When They See Us), Nic Pizzolato (True Detective), and Michael Green (Logan), who was reportedly hired to rewrite Blade from scratch.
The new Marvel movies schedule comes a day after Disney CEO Bob Iger said during an earnings call Wednesday that the company — which celebrated its 100-year anniversary this year with more misses than hits, including the costly Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Haunted Mansion, and The Marvels — would refocus on quality over quantity.
“As I looked at our overall output, meaning the studio, it’sclear that the pandemic created a lot of challenges creatively foreverybody, including for us,” Iger said. “In addition, at thetime the pandemic hit, we were leaning into a huge increase in how muchwe were making and I’ve always felt that quantity can be actually anegative when it comes to quality. And I think that’s exactly whathappened. We lost some focus.”
Iger continued: “We’re all rolling up our sleeves, including myself, to do just that.We have obviously great assets, great stories to tell from the assetsthat we either have or that we purchased. And I feel really optimisticabout the slate going forward, which is going to be a balance betweensome really strong sequels to some very, very popular titles, as well assome good original content, starting with [Walt Disney Animation’s] Wish, which comesout Thanksgiving weekend. So I feel good about thedirection we’re headed. But I’m mindful of the fact that our performancefrom a quality perspective wasn’t really up to the standards that weset for ourselves.”
Disney’s dated Marvel Studios movies include Deadpool 3 (July 26th, 2024), Captain America: Brave New World (February 14th, 2025), the Fantastic Four reboot (May 2nd, 2025), Thunderbolts (July 25th, 2025), Blade (November 7th, 2025), Avengers: The Kang Dynasty (May 1st, 2026), and Avengers: Secret Wars (May 7th, 2027). Films that are in development but remain undated include Armor Wars, Shang-Chi 2, and the X-Men reboot.
