I’ll toot my own horn a little bit and also admonish myself for not reporting it in an article to check myself. A few weeks back, I reported, on Twitter only (see below), that Marvel’s vampire superhero movie “Blade” starring Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali, was being put on hold.
READ MORE: ‘Blade’: Oscar-Winner Confirms Marvel Vampire Movie Is “On Hold” & Was Originally Set In The 1920s
Yesterday, we noted how Oscar-winning costume designer Ruth E. Carter (“Black Panther”) revealed how she was set to create the costumes for “Blade,” and seemingly confirmed that the project was indeed on hold as she was no longer working on it.
Today, another creative who was set to work on the picture doubled down on my reporting and said the film is not currently in the works.
Composer Flying Lotus, a rapper and musician who is also a filmmaker—he recently directed the sci-fi movie “Ash”—revealed on Twitter today that he had been set to write the score for “Blade.” Still, again, that’s no longer the case as the film isn’t under any active development.
“I guess we are so far from it even being a possibility now, but yeah, I was signed on to write music for the new BLADE movie before it fell through,” he wrote on Twitter today.
Flying Lotus, aka Steven Ellison, sometimes known as FlyLo, is also a music producer and DJ. He has released seven studio albums, the most recent being 2021’s Yasuke 2021, and directed two feature-length films, “Kuso” (2017) and the aforementioned sci-fi horror “Ash” (2025), starring Eiza González, Aaron Paul, and premiering at SXSW last month.
So that’s two creatives hired to work on the film who have not admitted they are no longer working on it.
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To reiterate my reporting, I’d heard Ali is still attached to the project, but that “Blade” was essentially shuttered for now.
“Blade” is not the only Marvel project recently put on hold. Marvel Television put three TV shows on hold earlier this year, one of them being the sci-fi-ish “Nova” based on the Nova Corps from “Guardians of The Galaxy,” and while it’s not official, it’s pretty damn clear that “Armor Wars,” the movie that was supposed to star Don Cheadle as War Machine in his own story is also not in active development.
As I stressed before, this doesn’t mean you won’t see a “Blade” movie one day. It primarily means, Marvel hasn’t cracked the story to a satisfactory degree and rather than drive themselves nuts trying to force the project to fruition are taking a break, putting pencils down and focusing their energies elsewhere for the moment (which also goes for “Armor Wars,” “Nova,” et. al).
There’s always the possibility that Blade is introduced in a bigger movie like “Avengers: Secret Wars,” or the rumored supernatural anti-heroes team-up movie, “Midnight Suns,” but all of that is speculation for now.
You’re likely going to notice a drop-off in production of Marvel movies between now and “Avengers: Secret Wars” in May 2027 because the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe will probably be reset from that point on.
While Marvel had initially planned four movies for 2026, all of that seems very unlikely now, given that nothing is going into production this year other than “Avengers: Doomsday” and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”
Unless a Marvel movie suddenly goes into production later this year and likely no later than the fall, you’ll unlikely see more than two Marvel movies released in 2026. And while 2027 has some placeholder dates, the same applies there: unless something goes into production soon-ish or in early 2026, 2027 could be relatively scarce Marvel-wise other than ‘Secret Wars.’ More when we have it, but cross off “Blade” on your mystery film calendars for now.
