“There’s only one Blade. There’s only ever gonna be one Blade.”
That was a very funny line by Wesley Snipes during his surprise cameo role in last summer’s Deadpool & Wolverine. Part of the reason the line was so funny was because Marvel was already working on the next Blade movie, and has been for years.
Today the line seems a bit less funny.
Disney announced today that the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s movie has been pulled from the company’s upcoming release calendar. Previously the film was dated for almost one year from now; on November 7, 2025. The update provided by the company said the film has been “removed from schedule” entirely.
Disney will now release a new Predator film, Predator: Badlands, on that release date.
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Marvel’s Blade was first announced over five years ago now, back at San Diego Comic-Con in 2019. At that time, little was revealed beyond the fact that Mahershala Ali would take over the role as Marvel’s daywalking vampire hunter from Snipes.
In the five years since, Ali has made a single, tiny appearance in the MCU — as a whispery voice in a post-credits scene during Eternals. He’s still yet to make his on-camera debut as the character.
All the while Marvel has shuffled the film around its release calendar, and reportedly thought and rethought exactly what they wanted to do with the character and the film. At one point, Ali would have starred in a 1920s period piece Blade. Numerous writers and directors have gone and gone through the years, incuding Bassam Tariq, Yann Demange, Nic Pizzolatto, and Michael Green.
Prior to Deadpool & Wolverine, Snipes played Blade in a trilogy of films in the 1990s and 2000s for New Line cinema. The first two were quite successful and popular, helping to pave the way for bigger and more elaborate Marvel movies like the first X-Men and Spider-Man.
This doesn’t mean we’ll never see Blade, or that Ali won’t play the role. If Snipes’ cameo in Deadpool & Wolverine teaches us anything, it’s that we should never say never when these Marvel movies are concerned. But it does confirm it is going to be a long time — maybe even years — before it gets done.
Disney did slot three untitled Marvel movies for 2028: On February 18, May 5, and November 10. Maybe Blade will wind up being one of those three films?
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