Posted in: Marvel Studios, Movies | Tagged: blade, mahershala ali, marvel, Marvel Studios

Blade Star Is "Really Encouraged With The Director Of The Project"

Blade star Mahershala Ali is "really encouraged with the direction of the project." The film currently has a release date of November 7, 2025.

Published Thu, 07 Dec 2023 11:47:08 -0600

by Kaitlyn Booth

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Article Summary

Mahershala Ali is optimistic about Blade's progress post-production delay.
Blade, starring Ali, faced setbacks but eyes a November 2025 release.
Marvel Studios may slash Blade's budget under $100 million in strategy shift.
Cost cuts reflect an industry adjusting to post-pandemic box office realities.

Now that the strike is over, plenty of projects are either trying to get back into production to meet their 2024 release dates or taking this time before the new year to prep to shoot next year. Blade, which might be the film that has had the hardest time figuring itself out for some reason that is still baffling, is one of the latter. It had a release date of next year, but the film was delayed to late 2025, so now there is plenty of time for this troubled production to figure everything out. One person who seems really encouraged by the latest developments on the project is Mahershala Ali. Ali is currently doing press for his new film out on Netflix called Leave The World Behind, but Entertainment Weekly did ask him about Blade.

"We're working on it. That's the best I could tell you," the actor says. "I'm really encouraged with the direction of the project. I think we'll be back at it relatively soon. … I'm sincerely encouraged in terms of where things are at and who's on board and who's leading the way as far as the writing of the script and the directing and all that. So that's the extent of what I can tell you."

Marvel Temporarily Shutting Down Blade To Search For New Director — Mahershala Ali arrives for WE Day California 2019 on April 25, 2019, in Inglewood, CA. Editorial credit: DFree / Shutterstock.com

How Is It This Hard To Make Blade Work?

Blade is a production that has had some ups and downs with multiple writers and directors coming onto the project, and, despite having an incredible leading man with Ali, they couldn't nail the film down. In a recent article about Marvel Studios and how they are reacting to 2023 being a less than stellar year, Blade is a film that could see a cut in budget dipping under $100 million. For the record, that is not a bad thing at all, and the budgets of these movies are out of control.

One of the main reasons Marvel and Disney, in general, struggled in 2023 was due to films having these insane budgets where they would have to pull in hundreds of millions of dollars to even get out of the red. And the reality of a post-COVID-19 world is that very few films do that anymore. Not only do very few films pull in the kind of numbers that 2018/2019 movies did, but the only ones that can have to be good. There isn't any skirting by on decent. So while many will see the dip in budget for Blade as a sign of impending doom, it isn't. It's a sign that people at Marvel and Disney are starting to realize that they have to budget these films like they will do in 2020 and beyond numbers, not 2018/2019 numbers, so slashing budgets across the board is a good thing for everyone. Blade currently has a November 7, 2025, release date.

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