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Marvel Studios has been wowing its fans with the beginning of the next story arc in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Part of that effort included a huge sizzle reel that teased a lot of projects, gave us titles to put to the sequels we’d just attached numbers to, and staked out release dates between here and summer 2023. Yet with all of that hoopla, the Blade reboot was, again, absent from any official discussion. Well, there’s a good reason for that, as the studio has just set a date for when the Mahershala Ali starring project will go into production, as well as why it’s taking so long.
As you probably expected, the MCU machine is currently hard at work plotting out what this new version of Blade is going to entail. That vital step apparently required the project to push out its production schedule, which was planned to start this September. As THR reports, the new date for Blade’s reawakening has been set for next summer, and for the following specifics:
Marvel isn’t rushing with Blade, whose start date was pushed from this September to July 2022, so that the studio can spend time working on the Stacy Osei-Kuffour-penned script.
It was only this past February that writer Stacy Osei-Kuffour, who recently served as a writer/story editor on HBO’s Watchmen limited series, was announced as being hired to write Blade. So at this point, there may have been an initial draft or outline that was handed into Marvel Studios. But the pushing of the initial production schedule would suggest that if this were the case, there might be some intense conversations currently underway about how this new, potentially PG-13 version of the Daywalker might play out.
We’ve all come to know the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a well oiled machine, so this Blade delay may just be part of Kevin Feige’s strategy to make up for lost time in a post-2020 world. Much like the time the entire MCU shifted its release dates to make way for Spider-Man: Homecoming, the delay in Blade’s production schedule could also be attributed to other reasons we don’t know about. Maybe something Fantastic is about to happen, and that set the wheels in motion.
That being said, it’s still hard to ignore the supposedly issued PG-13 edict that sees Deadpool 3 as the only Marvel Cinematic Universe project known to carry an R-rating. In the absence of information on what’s going on with Blade, other than its shooting schedule being delayed for almost a year, these sort of concerns tend to run rampant. So it wouldn’t be surprising to get an official statement from any of the Marvel Studios brass that clarifies that this isn’t a case of the studio ice skating uphill.
Blade is now set to start production in July 2022, with no release date staked out as of yet. Meanwhile, fans hungry for the cinematic component of the MCU will only have to wait until July 9th, when Black Widow debuts in theaters and Disney+ Premier Access. If you want to be ready for the big day, and need to catch up on all the Marvel TV you’ve missed out on this year, you should check out the current subscription offer Disney+ has running.
