Marvel still out here acting like it's going to release a Blade movie in 2025

Disney did one of its periodic big sweeps of its upcoming release calendar today, moving around a variety of future films—many of them from its Marvel subsidiary, and most of them carrying “titles” like Untitled Marvel, Untitled Disney, or Untitled Disney Animation. Among other things, the update confirmed a couple of things about the 2025 Marvel schedule that the studio rolled out at Comic-Con last month, including updating the title of May’s Thunderbolts to have an unexplained asterisk at the end. (Similarly, The Kang Dynasty has now officially been Robert Downey Jr.’d into Doomsday, set for May of 2026.)

The most fascinating thing about the schedule changes, though, might be the film that didn’t get any kind of movement, or even comment. (Not dissimilar to its treatment at Comic-Con, actually) And that would be the Mahershala Ali Blade movie, which continues to be the big, giant question mark on Marvel’s 2025 film plans. After having moved through multiple directors, tons of screenwriters, and several missed start dates for filming, it’s still not clear if the film, originally announced back in 2019, will arrive on time for its November 2025 release date. (It doesn’t have an official director right now, for one thing.) But that’s where Marvel is keeping it for now. (It’s gotten bad enough that the debacle around the movie caught a joke amidst some of the very spoiler-y cameos in the current Deadpool & Wolverine, which is the sort of thing Marvel head Kevin Feige can laugh about now… provided the movie ever actually comes out.)

According to Feige, the studio is simply exercising caution toward the film (caution it didn’t extend to any of the other movies announced back at the Con in 2019, although maybe that’s why Marvel’s been in a bit of a slump for the last few years). Our instinct is that it has something to do with the fact that Ali has expressed and exercised a ton of ownership over the project—he reportedly brought the idea of rebooting the vampire hunter to Marvel, who said “Yep, you just won an Oscar, let’s do it”—which is a rarity in Marvel land. Although the fact that the movie has gone through several very different drafts (including at least one version that was going to be a period piece) without anyone settling on something they all liked, is probably just as much of a culprit.