At this stage, audiences are going to be pleasantly surprised if the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Blade reboot turns out to even be a halfway decent contribution to the franchise, given that the project has been seemingly cursed with bad luck at every single turn.
It’s been almost four years since two-time Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali was trotted out onstage at San Diego Comic-Con to reveal he’d be breathing new life into the Daywalker, but the horror-tinged comic book blockbuster has done virtually nothing but stumble from one crisis to the next ever since.
Whether it’s directors dropping out, writers being replaced, or the start of production constantly being pushed back, Blade has been gathering bad buzz for the longest time. With that in mind, it’s been no surprise to discover that not so much a single eyelid was batted in shock when it became the first high-profile casualty of the ongoing writers’ strike.
After all, True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto was only hired to polish the screenplay last week, so it’s not as if he had enough time to hammer the latest draft into shape. Blade was all set to begin shooting next month at long last, but Marvel Studios has instead opted to hit the pause button, per The Hollywood Reporter.
What makes it even more of an isolated incident is the additional news that Thunderbolts, Deadpool 3, and Fantastic Four are all scheduled to kick off principal photography as intended, leaving the vampiric superhero story as the only one of the MCU’s upcoming shoots to grind to a halt. Needless to say, expect yet another release date delay.