The time of the day walker has come. A new report says Marvel Studios’ Blade reboot, starring Mahershala Ali, has found its director in Bassam Tariq. He’ll be joining screenwriter Stacy Osei-Kuffour to bring the story of the legendary Marvel half-vampire to un-life.
According to Deadline, Tariq was chosen as Blade’s director after a months-long search involving dozens of candidates, which only ended recently after the final picks gave their pitches for the movie’s direction. Originally, the plan was to hire a writer-director to helm the project, the article states, but ultimately Marvel chose to hire Osei-Kuffour as screenwriter and find a director to work with her. Tariq is an up-and-coming filmmaker, best known for the Riz Ahmed-starring indie film Mogul Mowgli, and this will be Tariq’s first major studio project.
The announcement comes almost two years to the day after Marvel held its massive Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2019. During that panel, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige revealed the future of the Cinematic Universe, including the surprise announcement that Ali would be joining as Blade, the famed vampire hunter who is, himself, half-vampire. Since then, updates have been few and far between. Not much of a surprise, considering it’s not set to come out for a few years—plus, the pandemic slowed down a lot of things. It wasn’t until February 2021 that we got our first bit of behind-the-scenes news with the hiring of Osei-Kuffour, who worked on HBO’s Watchmen and Hulu’s Pen15. Now that we have a writer and a director, the pieces are in place to tell a new version of the vampire saga first played onscreen by Wesley Snipes.
Blade does not have an expected release date yet. The Marvel Cinematic Universe continues in theaters with Black Widow and on television with Loki, which recently finished its debut season.
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DISCUSSION
TWO YEARS* after announcing to get your writer and director in place? You’d think they would have already had narrowed that list to a small handful BEFORE announcing the project. Even for the MCU.
This is why I could never work for Hollywood. It’s one thing to have an actor interested in a project (Rock/Black Adam took over a decade), but to announce the Lead and still not have an idea FOR TWO YEARS* who’s going to write and/or direct??
*(pandemic shutdown aside, you know they were still having meetings on who could do what, etc on these things.)