Mahershala Ali recently shared Marvel was originally planned on bringing Blade to television before he signed on for the film.
Blade was the first Marvel superhero to make the jump to the big screen back in the ’90s with the trilogy starring Wesley Snipes. Since then, Blade has been put on the back burner, but Marvel Studios announced last summer that they are finally developing a Blade film with Mahershala Ali attached to star. The film is still in its infant days of development as Marvel Studios searches for a writer to pen the script.
Before being announced as the new Blade, Mahershala Ali already had a few Marvel projects on his resume like Luke Cage and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Ali is now getting the chance to play a Marvel character on the big screen, but that almost didn’t happen when the Oscar-winner revealed on The Tight Rope Podcast that Marvel was originally developing a Blade TV series:
“So, in doing that show (Luke Cage), the day it premiered I had turned to my agent and I had said, ‘What are they doing with Blade?’ Because I kept hearing that they were trying to find a way to remake it and put it back together, and it was exciting for me to get to be in that Marvel space in TV, but for me, my goal had always been film. So, there was this long process of them speaking about, at least in the television division, really wanted to make it a TV show again, but not necessarily, trying to acquire the rights still, and some thing’s kinda going on, so it took a couple of years. For me, I just felt like since they were having conversations about bringing it back into being, I just wanted to be considered for it because I had definitely a connection, at least in my mind, to Wesley Snipes going way back to high school when people used to joke and say we looked alike, and all this stuff.
Mahershala Ali was also sought after for a role in The Batman, but the actor added why Blade appealed to him more than other comic book characters:
“I love that it’s darker, that’s all in terms of tone, he’s a little bit darker than some of the other ones, and so that element was attractive to me.”
Would you rather see a Blade TV series instead of a film? Let us know in the comments section below!
Full details on Mahershala Ali’s Blade are currently unknown, though Kevin Feige confirmed the reboot will be part of Marvel Studios’ Phase 5. The project is said to have come about after Mahershala Ali called Marvel expressing his interest in Blade following his Academy Award win for his performance in Green Book.
In Marvel Comics, Blade is also known as Eric Brooks, the half-human and half-vampire master martial artist whose mother was killed by a vampire during his birth. Since then, Blade has mastered his own fighting style to take on various types of monsters and rid the world of vampires. Wesley Snipes first portrayed the eponymous hero in 1998’s Blade and returned for the first sequel directed by Guillermo del Toro before making what is now his final appearance as the character in Blade Trinity.
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Source: The Tight Rope Podcast
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