Blade Now Making MCU Debut In ‘Marvel Zombies’ Thanks To Solo Film Clusterf**k
Never underestimate Marvel Studios’ potential to further fumble their live-action plans for Blade, as thanks to their continued inability to raise his solo film from the grave, the dhampir’s first proper MCU appearance will not only happen as part of the Marvel Zombies‘ ensemble cast, but also without the participation of his slated actor Mahershala Ali.
Picking up in the aftermath of the What If…Zombies? episode of the eponymous animated anthology, Marvel Zombies will see the a handful of still-living Avengers striking out across Earth’s undead wastelands in the hopes of using the Mind Stone (as discovered to be the cure in the original What If…? episode) to mass-disinfect the planet.
And while the series’ ‘Final Avengers’ roster will feature a number of well-established MCU heroes, such as Ant-Man, Spider-Man, and White Widow, they’ll also be joined on the frontlines by Blade, who in this timeline serves as the latest of the god Khonshu’s many Moon Knights.
Following the release of the series’ trailer, fans were taken aback by the fact that rather than his solo film, Marvel Zombies would play host to the first appearance of the Daywalker since his off-screen voice cameo in Eternals‘ post-credit scene (which itself is no longer relevant thanks to Marvel Studios scrapping its teased Black Knight plotline).
But far from being the only ones, Marvel Studios’ Head of Streaming, Television and Animation Brad Winderbaum recently admitted to IGN that this switch-up also came as a surprise to the series’ production team, who had fully expected for it to release well after Blade made its theatrical debut:
“We never, in a million years, thought that the Zombies show would proceed a live-action Blade. We developed this show believing there would be a Blade movie out well before Zombies.
“So the fact this is the first Blade in the MCU on screen is really just kind of a surprising privilege to us. And one of the reasons why we made him The Fist of Khonshu, was that they were discovering Blade in the live-action side, and we knew that we could end up having to pivot if we tried to hew close to what they were creating in live action.
“So by making him a version of Moon Knight, we were able to kind of create something original and have a little bit more freedom with the character.”
And in further separating this alternate universe Blade from his mainstream counterpart, as well as adding sun-soaked insult to injury, this alternate universe Blade won’t even be voiced by the aforementioned Ali, who has been waiting in the wings to pick up a katana ever since he was first cast in 2019.
Instead, the Fist of Khonshu will be portrayed by voice actor Todd Williams, who many may know as Invincible‘s Titan – a role he notably took over from Ali.
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.
Providing an update in July, 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-expansion” post-Endgame.
However, according to a subsequent report from Variety’s Tatiana Siegel, “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.”
