‘Blade’ Loses Director, Production Likely Delayed
Bassam Tariq has exited as the director of the upcoming Blade reboot from Marvel Studios, placing the movie in limbo a few weeks before it was due to start shooting.
The Hollywood Reporter was first to post the news, which included a statement from Marvel and another from Tariq himself. The public excuse is a scheduling conflict, a stunning issue given the fact that Tariq has been hired for over a year. Said Marvel:
“Due to continued shifts in our production schedule, Bassam is no longer moving forward as director of Blade but will remain an executive producer on the film. We appreciate Bassam’s talent and all the work he’s done getting Blade to where it is.”
Tariq told THR the following:
“It’s been an honor working with the wonderful folks at Marvel. We were able to put together a killer cast and crew. Eager to see where the next director takes the film.”
The casting call for the movie has apparently been shut down and will not resume until the spring of 2023. According to insider Jeff Sneider, the project was in very bad shape, with lead actor and executive producer Mahershala Ali very disappointed with the project, and Kevin Feige apparently spreading himself too thin. We really don’t know what came first, the chicken or the egg. Is Marvel delaying production because they need more time to rework the script, and that forced Tariq to exit, or did Tariq exit over creative differences which pressed Marvel to shut down production for a few months?
The story from THR does confirm a recent piece of speculation that had Moon Knight and X-Men ’97 scribe Beau DeMayo as the current writer for the movie. It’s still unknown who will receive final writing credit for the movie (that is usually decided in the months prior to the release by the Writers Guild of America), but it seems like DeMayo is working hard on rewrites for the movie. Again, we don’t know whether DeMayo’s rewrites forced Tariq to exit over creative differences, or Marvel hiring him to rewrite caused a delay in production.
In any case, it seems like we can scrap that November 3, 2023, release date for Blade. We now just have to hope that Marvel doesn’t use it as the new date for The Marvels, another film that has been delayed multiple times, albeit for very different and pandemic-related reasons. After Blade, the next film in line is Captain America: New World Order, which is, from all accounts, in pretty good shape. If no other movie fills in that November 3 slot, it will mean almost an entire year with no Marvel movies in theaters, between The Marvels releasing on July 28, 2023, and Captain America 4 on May 3, 2024. We shall see what happens.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
