Marvel Studios “Feeling No Sense Of Urgency” Towards ‘Blade’ Reboot, Instead Excited For Ryan Coogler’s ‘Black Panther 3’
In yet another blow to a film that should absolutely not be this hard to make, a new report suggests that not only is Marvel Studios feeling little “urgency” towards their disastrous Blade reboot, but that they have also found themselves near-completely ignoring its production in favor of Ryan Coogler’s upcoming Black Panther 3.
This latest whisper regarding the Disney subsidiary’s film plans was reportedly gleamed by Variety‘s Tataiana Siegel via her own personal conversations with a number of Marvel insiders.
In speaking to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s post-2025 slate, the outlet’s Executive Film & Media Editor detailed, “There won’t be much to analyze for the next year. The next Marvel movie to hit theaters is Spider-Man: Brand New Day on July 31, followed by [Avengers:] Doomsday” in December and Avengers: Secret Wars in December 2027.”
To this end, she further relayed, “Amid an industrywide pullback on superheroes, the Marvel brain trust is feeling no sense of urgency on the long-gestating Blade reboot or even a new Deadpool outing, sources say. However, ideas are percolating on a Ryan Coogler-helmed Black Panther 3, creating excitement internally.”
By now, the delays to the MCU’s attempted Blade film have become the stuff of legends, with its thus far six-year long residence in production hell seeing it go through three writers, three total base concepts – a period piece, a backdoor pilot for the hero’s daughter Danielle, and currently just an out-and-out Blade adventure – five release date delays, six total script revisions, its unused wardrobe being handed off to Coogler’s Sinners, and untold hours of frustration for star Mahershala Ali.
In providing the film’s most recent update, Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige both confirmed that “Mahershala is still attached” and blamed the film’s failure to rise from the dead on the franchise’s “over-exapnsion” post-Endgame.
“For the very first time ever, quantity trumped quality,” said the baseball-capped producer at a recent press roundtable, per a recap provided by Variety. “We had spent 12 years working on the Infinity Saga, saying, ‘That’s never going to happen to us. We always had more characters that people were asking about than we could possibly make, because we weren’t going to make a movie a month — that’s crazy. Suddenly there’s a mandate to make more, and we go, ‘Well, we do have more’ … But maybe that’s what we fell into.”
As to how this impacted Blade, Feige told attendees, “We didn’t want to simply just put a leather outfit on him and have him start killing vampires. It had to be unique.”
“It fell into the time when we started pulling back and saying, ‘Only accept insanely great,’ And it wasn’t ‘insanely great’ at the time.”
As of writing, Marvel’s Blade reboot does not have a confirmed release date.
