Marvel is putting the Blade film starring Mahershala Ali officially on the backburner.
Per multiple reports, Disney has taken Blade off of its 2025 release calendar. Instead, Disney is putting Predator: Badlands in its place. The film was originally slated for a Nov. 7, 2025 theatrical release.
Blade‘s development stall gets even more intense as Marvel adds more films to its 2020s release schedule. Three untitled films are now scheduled for Feb. 18, 2028, May 5, 2028 and Nov. 10, 2028.
The new development around Blade reflects a lot of the behind-the-scenes retooling of Marvel projects that has happened in recent years.
Disney CEO Bob Iger said in July 2023:
“There have been some disappointments. We would have liked some of our more recent releases to perform better,” he said to CNBC, according to Variety. “It’s reflective not as a problem from a personal perspective, but I think in our zeal to basically grow our content significantly to serve mostly our streaming offerings, we ended up taxing our people way beyond–in terms of their time and their focus–way beyond where they had been.”
“Marvel’s a great example of that. They had not been in the TV business at any significant level. Not only did they increase their movie output, but they ended up making a number of television series, and frankly, it diluted focus and attention,” he continued. “That is, I think more of the cause than anything.”
As a result, Iger announced Disney’s new strategy for Marvel in a 2024 quarterly earnings call. He said that Marvel, as well as Disney overall, will “reduce output and focus on quality.” He added, though, that this strategy is “particularly true with Marvel.”
“We’re slowly going to decrease volume and go to probably about two TV series a year instead of what had become four and reduce our film output from maybe four a year to two, or a maximum of three,” he said, according to Variety. He also added that he feels “great” about the slate of films coming up, and that he’s “committed to spending more and more time on” Marvel’s output strategy.
“The team is one that I have tremendous confidence in and the IP that we’re mining, including all the sequels we’re doing, is second to none,” he said.
Feige told Empire in 2024 how he is choosing to see the reduced output as a good thing, citing Marvel’s ability to focus solely on this year’s blockbuster Deadpool & Wolverine as a sign that Marvel can get back to focusing on quality over quantity.
“It’s nice to be able to rally behind one feature project this year,” he said. “I’m so much more comfortable being the underdog. I prefer being able to surprise, and exceed expectations. So it does seem like the last year, which has not been ideal, has set us up well for that.”
It would seem that Blade was one of those films that was announced during Marvel’s previous strategy of setting up a flurry of expectations around many new projects. And with the amount of rewriting and turnover with directors and cast members, including Delroy Lindo and Aaron Pierre, it makes sense that Blade would be taken off the release schedule until Marvel can be sure there’s a strong story and team behind it.
Feige told Blavity’s Shadow and Act in July that Marvel is still “committed to the movie.”
“We’re so committed to it that we’re not going to make it until it’s right, which has been frustrating for us, and for some fans, because it’s taken a while,” he admitted. “We have a writer working on it now. I’ve read half of his new draft, and it’s feeling good so far.”
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