Marvel’s ‘Blade’ Shut Down By Writer’s Strike

Blade may be tougher than vampires, but he’s no match for a writer’s strike.

According to reports, Marvel has paused preproduction on Blade, their version of the vampire hero who became a major hit for Wesley Snipes in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The new film will star Mahershala Ali and be directed by Yann Demange. It’s the first blockbuster that has supposedly been directly impacted by the recent writers’ strike by the WGA.

The Hollywood Reporter claims that the film was supposed to go into prodiction next month, and that True Detective’s Nic Pizzolatto had recently been brought in to rework the script. But with the writers’ strike now fully underway, “time simply ran out” to finish the revised script in time to begin production on schedule.

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As for the rest of Marvel’s upcoming slate, THR claims the studio currently has Captain America: New World Order, and the TV series Agatha: Coven of Chaos and Wonder Man all currently in production, with Deadpool 3 and Thunderbolts set to go before cameras in the next few weeks. Apparently, those screenplays are solid enough for production to continue (or begin in some cases) — although if those movies wanted a writer on set to work on last-minute rewrites that won’t be possible as long as the strike continues. (Marvel is known to rework its scripts on set, and sometimes well into post-production.)

Blade is currently scheduled for release in theaters on September 6, 2024. It’s not clear yet whether the shut down will affect the film’s schedule. Likely, no one knows the answer to that question right now, and no one will until we see how long the writers’ strike will last.