At the San Diego Comic-Con in 2019, Marvel Studios announced that Mahershala Ali would take on the title role in a new Blade movie. No one could have anticipated a global pandemic being on the horizon, but more than four years later, there's still no sign of the Daywalker.
According to Variety, Kevin Feige is well aware that the MCU isn't firing on all cylinders right now and is pulling the plug on scripts and projects that aren't working.
In the case of Blade, after going through at least five writers, two directors, and a shutdown just six weeks before production, Oscar-nominated Logan writer Michael Green has been tapped to start over. This comes after Ali was gearing up to leave the project.
The plan now is to make Blade for less than $100 million and whatever comes next sounds better than what was previously in the works. One of the scripts scrapped by Feige "morphed into a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons. Blade was relegated to the fourth lead, a bizarre idea considering that the studio had two-time Oscar winner Ali on board."
The report also details why Marvel Studios has faced issues with VFX and how that impacted Disney+ She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. When it comes to the theatrical titles, The Marvels has faced its fair share of struggles, and while it's tracking for a $75 million - $80 million opening, the budget is said to have ballooned to $250 million.
Four weeks of reshoots were required to "bring coherence to a tangled storyline," with director Nia DaCosta said to have raised eyebrows for working on another movie, Hedda, while The Marvels was still in post-production.
A public test screening was held in Texas this past June, only for the Captain Marvel sequel to receive "middling reviews." If recent rumours about a surprise Multiversal cameo are correct, then we're guessing that was followed by the aforementioned reshoots.
"If you’re directing a $250 million movie, it’s kind of weird for the director to leave with a few months to go," one source says. "Kevin’s real superpower, his genius, has always been in postproduction and getting his hands on movies and making sure that they finished strongly. These days, he’s spread thin."
There's work to be done and if The Marvels does underperform, then it will be a rough end to the year after Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania disappointed. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was a high point, but filmmaker James Gunn has since made the leap to DC Studios to take charge of the DCU.