Delroy Lindo joins Mahershala Ali's Blade revival
Veteran actor Lindo is only the second person, after Ali, to board the vampire-dusting project
[Note: This post contains spoilers for the end of Eternals.]
Marvel’s upcoming Blade revival film has just added its second cast member to its roster, and it’s pretty much shooting 2 for 2 so far. Which is to say that Variety reports that TV and film veteran Delroy Lindo is joining the cast of the vampire-hunting flick.
Lindo—whose recent credits include memorable turns on The Good Fight, The Harder They Fall, and Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods—joins a cast list that previously only had one name on, albeit one name that was an Oscar-winning doozy: Star Mahershala Ali. It’s not clear yet who Lindo will be playing as he joins the Blade team, although Variety speculates that he’d be a natural fit for Jamal Afari, the battle-hardened mentor who takes young half-vampire Blade under his wing, and who was transformed into Kris Kristofferson’s Whistler in the Wesley Snipes films.
The Blade revival was originally announced (by Ali) back in 2019, with the actor coming out at the end of Marvel’s big Comic-Con panel that year. (Bringing the character back was apparently predicated largely on Ali’s involvement; he’s the one who made the push to get Marvel’s first real cinematic success story back in front of fans.) Bassam Tariq has been tapped to direct the film, working from a script penned by Watchmen’s Stacy Osei-Kuffour.
Ali is already an MCU veteran of sorts, having played villain Cottonmouth in the now-excised-from-continuity Luke Cage series on Netflix. He made his formal “debut” in the Marvel Cinematic Universe earlier this month, making a brief voice cameo at the end of Eternals. (No word yet on whether Kit Harrington, whose character was the one Blade was addressing in that post-credit sequence, will reprise his role for this new film; Harrington himself has said that he’s hopeful for a second appearance.)