In July 2019, fresh off the high of Avengers: Endgame, Marvel Studios peeled back the curtain on Phase 4. Among the many things announced was Blade, starring and willed into being by Mahershala Ali and—y’know what, we don’t have to do this part. After years of shifting dates, supposed cast additions and a rotating door of directors, the tail end of July 2026 confirmed what many had suspected and dreaded for a while: Marvel’s Ali-led Blade movie won’t happen.
Cue the half-hearted admission of failure from Kevin Feige, cue diplomatic (but still shady) words from Ali about moving on and making any future questions Marvel’s problem. Cue the enhanced outrage now that it’s just out there in the open, with many wondering how one messes up an idea previously done nearly 30 years, three movies and a short-lived TV show ago. Of all the MCU’s problems throughout this specific decade, Blade’s off-again, debatably on-again status is going to stay up there as the biggest “L” for a long time, as it should.
It’s never fun when you hear about something that ends up getting canceled. They’re bad all over, but they’re especially bad in films and games. In the immediate, more human concern of a cancellation’s aftermath, a project getting gutted in this day and age can be pretty devastating to those who were to work on it. Whatever scale a movie like this would’ve ended up, Blade would’ve been someone’s paycheck—a costumer, an editor, stunt actor, and so forth—at a time when everyone in the industry is struggling and hoping for a stable gig and less upheavals. Ali’s currently Fine—he’s headlining October’s Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, written and directed by one-time Blade helmer Bassam Tariq, while former costars Mia Goth and Aaron Pierre are respectively in The Odyssey and the upcoming Lanterns—but the people under them might not be.
This concern isn’t isolated to just Blade’s movie: his solo game, announced in 2023 from Dishonored developer Arkane, is in danger of being cancelled. Caught up in Xbox’s yearslong woes stemming from its near-decade of studio acquisitions (including Arkane), the studio is currently “safe” in that being located in Lyon grants it a consultation process that may save it. (Thanks, French labor laws!) It’ll reportedly be some time before we know how that resolves, but it’s not great that Arkane’s being looked at like someone who’s life support is already unplugged and undergoing a slow passing.
Like the dead film’s top-billed stars, the character of Blade will generally be fine amidst all this; as far as video games are concerned, he’s in Marvel Rivals and next week’s Marvel Tōkon. Odds are, this recent news will result in a surge of players for him in either title, particularly the latter, a fighting game that gives him a cool samurai sword. It’s doubtful he’ll disappear on the page either, since he’s currently in Jed Mackay and Devmalya Pramanik’s Marc Spector: Moon Knight for an arc before he probably pops up in someone else’s book(s) throughout 2027. Some writer and artist will take this cancelled project as free reign to do something they want with the character since he’s now technically safe from MCU synergy for the rest of the ’20s and early ’30s.
But when it comes to the big screen and potentially single-player games, it’s going to be a while before Marvel’s out of either doghouses. That this whole movie’s been such an ordeal adds more fuel to the criticism that Marvel’s been doing their Black characters dirty throughout the Multiverse Saga, not helped by last weekend’s announcement of a Ghost Rider movie riding into 2028. A third Black Panther hitting theaters that same year can only go so far, and if anything, damns the studio even further in many’s eyes, since the Wakandans have more going on than a simple vampire hunter, and they’re about to wrap a trilogy supplied by a handful of guest appearances across several live-action and animated series since 2021.
With the ghost completely given up, it’ll only be a matter of time before we learn more about what Blade went through to not get made. Whoever’s to blame for how this all shook out (and by how much), it won’t change this being a high-profile fumble on Marvel’s end. Amid all the posts using that Deadpool & Wolverine screenshot of Wesley Snipes declaring “there’ll only ever be one Blade,” a question worth asking is how in the fuck that’s even acceptable, let alone possible.
So here’s to Marvel’s Blade movie (2019-2026): simple on paper, yet surprisingly difficult in execution. Wish your death weren’t so, but maybe sometime down the line, you’ll live again through animation. Or failing that, someone will just make something similar as you with the serial numbers filed off.
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