Amid all of Marvel’s canceled and postponed projects, one movie is always brought up as the epitome of development hell: Blade. The reboot of the ‘90s vampire hunter series was announced in 2019 with Mahershala Ali as its star, but directors kept churning through the project with no sense of forward movement.
After years of kicking the release date back, Marvel finally removed it from its schedule in October 2024, putting the movie’s existence in jeopardy. But a figure from the franchise’s past has revealed that he offered a helping hand — and got a hopeful update in response.
In a conversation with Variety, Blade, Blade II, and Blade: Trinity writer David Goyer, who also directed Trinity, revealed that he reached out to Marvel to ask if they needed help with the reboot’s screenplay and got a thanks, but no thanks. “I had my agent call Marvel and say, ‘Do you guys need any help?’” he said. “And they said, ‘We love you, but we think we’ve cracked it now, and we’re in a good place.’”
Blade has been burning through writers as fast as directors. Stacy Osei-Kuffour wrote the original script, but in 2022, former X-Men ‘97 showrunner Beau DeMayo came on to tinker with it. Later that same year, writer Michael Starburry joined the project when Yann Demange became its latest director.
In April 2023, True Detective’s Nic Pizzolatto signed on to co-write the script, but in November 2023, it was announced that Michael Green would be writing the script from scratch. Finally, in June 2024 — a few months before the movie was removed from the schedule — Eric Pearson was brought on to do rewrites. That’s six different writers, which is a lot of cooks in the proverbial kitchen.
But the script is finally in a good place, at least according to Goyer, so all the movie needs now is a director and a release date. Maybe Marvel was just giving Goyer a polite brushoff, but amid a tidal wave of bad Blade updates, even the faintest glimmer of hope is welcome. At the very least, Marvel was smart enough not to add a seventh writer. That has to count for something, right?
