Blade bumped off Marvel's 2025 release list as development hell continues
Five years after it was announced, Blade's release date is moving further away
Marvel’s Blade has quietly been shunted off the 2025 release schedule, and now has no announced release date.
The long-talked-about Blade reboot was expected to arrive on November 7, 2025. That’s a long way away in general life terms, but this made it one of Marvel’s nearest releases.
Its entry on the Marvel website now has no date at all.
There’s no other Marvel movie to step up and take its place, but parent Disney does have another film for the slot: Predator: Badlands. It’s the sixth film in the series, not including the Alien crossover flicks.
But what’s going on with Blade?
It has had a rough run the entire way. Blade lost its first director, Bassam Tariq, in 2022. And his replacement, Yann Demange, also left the project in June 2024.
In September 2024 we heard another, but unnamed, director was being considered for the job. But when you’re talking about finding a director just a year before a AAA blockbuster film is due to be out? It’s not a good sign.
Blade was announced in 2019 at a Comic-Con convention, and back then commentators were hoping it would hit cinemas in 2022. But that was a different world — one before covid and the Hollywood strikes.
If there was one point when we knew the wheels really had come off Blade, it was probably October 2022. This was when the film’s production was officially put on hold, and its then-proposed November 2023 release date canned.
The film sees Mahershala Ali take over the role of Blade, played by Wesley Snipes in Blade, Blade 2 and Blade: Trinity, as well as the recent mega-hit Deadpool & Wolverine.
Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds has suggested Snipes should be given his own Logan-style swan song — presumably in addition to this reboot — although of course that didn’t end up being the last film in which Hugh Jackman would play Wolverine.
Blade’s current status: no director, no release date, no shooting date. We’re basically back at square one, other than — as far as we know — Mahershala Ali still being on-board.
They’d better get their skates on. Ali is already 50, which is older than Hugh Jackman was when Logan came out.
Marvel movies still pencilled in for 2025 include Captain America: Brave New World (February 14), Thunderbolts (May 2) and The Fantastic Four: First Steps (July 25).