Aaron Pierre is joining Delroy Lindo and Mahershala Ali in Marvel’s Blade reboot starring Ali in the titular human-vampire hybrid role.
Bassam Tariq is directing the feature project from a script Stacy Osei-Kuffour penned. Osei-Kuffour writing the script makes her the first Black woman to pen a Marvel movie.
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Created by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan, Blade first appeared was in the 1973 comic book The Tomb of Dracula. “Blade” was born as a human-vampire hybrid and has spent his long life seeking to rid the world of vampires like the one that killed his mother. Over the years, he has mastered his own style of fighting monsters of all kinds.
While it is unknown who Pierre will be playing and it is also unclear who Lindo will be playing. However rumor has it Lido will play Jamal Afari, who in the Marvel comics is the man who raised and mentored Blade — a.k.a. Eric Brooks — in the ways of vampire hunting when Eric was young. In the comics, Jamal is Black, but in the 1998 feature adaptation of “Blade” starring Wesley Snipes, the character was renamed Abraham Whistler and cast with white actor Kris Kristofferson.
The 1998 original franchise led by Snipes, was a surprise box office hit for Marvel. It earned $131 million against a budget of $45 million budget. It also spawned two addition sequels and went on to earn a combined $415 million. The success of Blade helped save the Marvel company that back in 1996 was going bankrupt and filed Chapter 11 that year. It also helped pave the way for the future MCU.
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Marvel has not yet announced a release date for Blade, but it is expected to debut in the fall of 2023.