Mahershala Ali's MCU Blade movie is turning into a True Detective reunion

We don’t normally associate Marvel Comics character Blade with a lot of serious detective work. If someone dies and Blade’s on the case, then the culprit is almost always—to quote an acclaimed poet—“Vampires! Vampires! Vampires! Vampires!”

Nevertheless: The long-in-the-works Marvel Cinematic Universe debut of the character is turning into a real True Detective reunion, with news breaking today that that show’s creator, Nic Pizzolatto, has now been tapped to write the film. That, in turn, transforms the upcoming film into a sort of reunion project for Pizzolatto and Ali, who previously collaborated on the third season of the HBO crime series.

Blade has been a big question mark on the Marvel calendar for a damn long while at this point; the movie was originally announced back in 2019, and got the standard post-credits tease (with Ali voicing a single line of dialogue) at the end of 2021's Eternals. But the film has run into a few problems in pre-production, most notably losing original director Bassim Tariq, who was replaced with Lovecraft Country’s Yann Demange last year. At the same time, writer Michael Starrbury was brought on to write a script; Pizzolatto is reportedly working from that template for his own draft of the film, which he’s been working on for the last several weeks.

Blade—which recently cast Mia Goth as, we’re guessing, some extremely creepy vampire lady—is currently set for a September 2024 premiere, so Pizzolatto at least has some time to work on his version of the story. We have no idea what direction the new film is set to take, but this latest hire certainly suggests we’re not in for a kinder, gentler, less-gritty Blade movie whenever Ali’s version eventually makes its way to theaters.

[via THR]