Tag: Blade

Posted on in Film News

‘Blade’: Marvel Reportedly Eyeing ‘Mogul Mowgli’ Director Bassam Tariq For Reboot

Marvel Studios has been developing a Blade project going back to 2013, when it was reported that they were developing in-house script for both Blade and Ms. Marvel (later turned into Captain Marvel). However, when Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali (Alita: Battle Angel, Moonlight, Luke Cage) approached Marvel about playing Eric Brooks, they weren’t exactly planning on moving forward with a film at that time until Ali’s enthusiasm got them to rethink that. The studio announced the casting and the project moving forward at the end of San Diego Comic-Con 2019.

The Blade reboot might have a director announcement coming very soon.

Deadline reports that indie director Bassam Tariq, worked with Riz Ahamed (Venom, Rogue One, Sound of Metal) on the British rap movie Mogul Mowgli, is the studio’s top choice to helm the action horror reboot.

A script is being worked on by writer Stacy Osei-Kuffour, who wrote on HBO’s Watchmen series and the Jordan Peele-produced Hunters.

Eric Brooks aka Blade is a vampire hunter, that happens to be half-vampire himself and allows him to be immune sunlight/silver making him stronger than a majority of adversaries. The main antagonists for Blade are The Vampire Nation, the secretive group of shadowy figures that have a stranglehold on positions of power in human society and have sects all over the world. This makes the new incarnation of Blade a global franchise and we could see vampires in various countries, we’ve seen Asian vampires teased in the original and it would be neat to see Blade in Japan or Hong Kong.

I was massively let down with Marvel’s Black Widow movie after producers and Scarlett Johansson talked-up the action being the best in the MCU, only for them to give us generic fight sequences and an overuse of cartoony CGI (Blade’s worst element is the poorly aged CGI) that quickly dissolved the grittier tone they had been aiming for. I’m hoping that Marvel takes Blade’s action scenes a little more seriously by hiring 87Eleven Action Design (John Wick 1-4, Atomic Blonde) or bring back Liang Yang (Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness) to handle the fight choreography.

End of the day, the Blade is an action franchise with horror elements. The original three movies (third produced by Kevin Feige) led by Wesley Snipes were R-rated projects and Marvel Studios/Disney kept saying over multiple years that Deadpool 3 would be keeping it’s R-rating. There is a good chance since most kids have no idea who Blade is that the vampire hunter might keep his original rating. Also, I’m not sure how interesting PG-13 vampire movie is going to be without blood or invented deaths for vampires at the hands of Blade.

There had been chatter about the studio potentially shooting Blade next year, but Marvel Studios hasn’t given the project a release date and this directorial candidate hasn’t signed a deal. I guess we’ll have to wait a little longer for some official announcements from Kevin Feige/Marvel.

BLADE – A half-mortal, half-immortal is out to avenge his mother’s death and rid the world of vampires. The modern-day technologically advanced vampires he is going after are in search of his special blood type needed to summon an evil god who plays a key role in their plan to execute the human race.

SOURCE: DEADLINE

Posted on in News

Multiple Marvel Studios LLCs Confirmed For Unannounced Projects Likely To Be Revealed Soon

It looks like Marvel Studios is about to make another big announcement about new film and television projects in the very near future.

The Ronin can now confirm the following LLCs are specifically for Marvel Studios projects, some of these were previously mentioned by us, but we can now confirm they are indeed for Marvel.

  • BATTLE ANYONE PRODUCTIONS
  • ACID POP PRODUCTIONS 
  • NATURAL HISTORY PRODUCTIONS
  • SPEYSIDE PRODUCTIONS 

The identity of the projects is unknown, but you’d have to imagine that things like Captain American 4, X-Men, Blade, Jon Watt’s Fantastic Four reboot, and Deadpool 3 could be candidates. However, at least some of these could be for Disney+ shows.

UPDATE: We have some follow-up information from a source that Natural History Productions is a Disney+ project that is aiming to begin shooting in February 2022 at Trilith Studios in Atlanta, Georgia.

It’s unclear what it could be but given it’s a television series we could speculate it might be something like a Ka-Zar or Savage Land (connected to the X-Men franchise) project makes sense given the obscurity of the characters (Disney+ shows seem to be introducing lesser known characters) and the cosmic genetic tinkering going on similar to things like Eternals, X-Men, and Inhumans. At one point, Marvel Studios was developing a feature film based on Ka-Zar but pumped the breaks for various reasons.

Eternals shot a scene at Oxford University Museum of Natural History, which is worth mentioning too.

Battle Anyone certainly gives us Secret Wars vibes given that Battleworld is a thing in the comics. Also, Kang The Conqueror and the Multiverse being established for Phase 4 it’s possible that The Russo Brothers will have a reason to come back and make Secret Wars sooner rather than later. Season 1 of Loki also mentioned a Multiverse War, and could be pushed forward with something like Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness, and Season 2 of Loki.

We previously revealed that Ryan Coogler’s untitled Wakanda series was moving forward because Marvel had created an official LLC for the project with Maglev Train Productions.

There is also a new LLC called Ionic Productions, but we can’t confirm if this is Marvel-related. Stay tuned for updates! Other stuff that needs further confirmation include On Your Mark Productions and Bad Egg Productions.

Posted on in Film News

‘Blade’ Actor Stephen Dorff Hammers Modern Marvel Movies & ‘Black Widow’; “I’m Embarrassed For Scarlett”

Actor Stephen Dorff recently worked with Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali on third season of HBO’s True Detective, but it sounds like the former Blade actor wouldn’t have advised Ali to take on the Blade mantle. Dorff spoke with The Indepenent (via The Hollywood Reporter) and proceeded to hammer the modern Marvel Studios movies, specifically, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow solo film.

“I still hunt out the good shit because I don’t want to be in Black Widow. It looks like garbage to me. It looks like a bad video game. I’m embarrassed for those people. I’m embarrassed for Scarlett! I’m sure she got paid five, seven million bucks, but I’m embarrassed for her. I don’t want to be in those movies. I really don’t. I’ll find that kid director that’s gonna be the next [Stanley] Kubrick and I’ll act for him instead,” Stephen Dorff said.

Mr. Dorff had played vampire villain Decaon Frost in 1998’s Blade, the successful R-rated film led by Wesley Snipes and directed by Stephen Norrington that was released two years before Fox’s X-Men. It’s regarded as the film that proved to Marvel that they could make successful films with their popular and obscure characters.

I guess fans that wanted Stephen Dorff to play the MCU’s Wolverine might want to pump those breaks. Then again, Ethan Hawke had a similar opinion only to join the Disney+ series Moon Knight, starring opposite with Oscar Isaac.

BLACK WIDOW – In Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff confronts the darker parts of her ledger when a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past arises. Pursued by a force that will stop at nothing to bring her down, Natasha must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger. Directed by Cate Shortland and produced by Kevin Feige, the movie stars Scarlett Johansson reprising her role as Natasha Romanoff. Florence Pugh stars as Yelena Belova, David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov aka Red Guardian, and Rachel Weisz as Melina Vostokoff.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT

Posted on in Film News

‘John Wick 4’: Wesley Snipes Reportedly Won’t Appear Despite Discussions

John Wick: Chapter 4 is going to begin filming soon at Studio Babelsberg just outside Berlin, Germany, where franchise star Keanu Reeves shot The Matrix 4 last year with director Lana Wachowski.

Well, the casting has been underway for John Wick 4 with some impressive new additions such as Japanese action star Horiyuki Sanada, Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen, Atomic Blonde’s Bill Skarsgard, Stowaway’s Shamier Anderson, and the film’s female lead played by Japanese-British singer Rina Sawayama.

There had been rumblings that Blade star Wesley Snipes was joining the epic fourth installment, however, The Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit has now squashed that via Twitter, despite confirming early discussions with Lionsgate.

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum ended with John surviving the fall from the roof of The Continental hotel after Ian McShane’s Winston shot him, Winston’s motivations weren’t entirely clear as he didn’t seem shocked that Mr. Wick got away and could be giving The High Table a false sense of security. Wick eventually lands at the feet of Laurence Fishburne’s Bowery King, who had his organization taken away from him by The High Table and convinces John to go to war with him against the mysterious group of criminal syndicate puppet masters. 

John Wick 4 will hit the big screen on May 27, 2022 and Lionsgate had confirmed plans to make John Wick: Chapter 5, but will no longer shoot back-to-back with the next installment. Franchise creator and architect, Derek Kolstad, stated that he won’t be involved in the next two films and suggested John Wick 5 could be the final pic.

There is a possibility that director Chad Stahelski will pivot to make his Highlander reboot next (over John Wick 5), which reportedly has Mission: Impossible -Fallout’s Henry Cavill circling an unnamed lead role. The sticking point is that we don’t have an official confirmation from Lionsgate or Stahelski that Highlander is happening anytime soon. Chad making Highlander could certainly give Keanu Reeves a bit of break after the extended shoot for The Matrix 4 took longer than expected due to the pandemic and spending the rest of the year working on John Wick 4.

SOURCE: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Posted on in Film News

Regina King To Direct Monster Movie ‘Bitter Root’ For Legendary & Producer Ryan Coogler – Based On Image Comics Property

It doesn’t look like we’ll be seeing Regina King direct Blade, The Vampire Hunter or the new black Superman film that is being developed by Warner Bros./Bad Robot, she’s decided another comic book project altogether.

After directing the Oscar-nominated film, One Night In Miami, she’s landed a high-profile feature adaptation of the Image Comics property Bitter Root for Legendary and producer Ryan Coogler. The news comes from The Hollywood Reporter and sounds a little similar to Lovecraft Country.

Bitter Root is set in 1924 during the Harlem Renaissance and tells of the Sangeryes, a family of once-great monster hunters, who face an evil that descends upon New York.

Screenwriter Bryan Edward Hill (Power Rangers) is behind the film’s script.

It’s unknown when Legendary wants Bitter Root to begin shooting but this likely means she could be too busy to tackle films for Marvel Studios or DC Films at this time. Allowing other names floated by trades to tackle Blade and Superman as it looks like the two projects are eyeing a production start in 2022.

Ryan Coogler is about to begin shooting on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever this July with a spinoff series for Disney+ also in the works.

SOURCE: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Posted on in Film News

Marvel’s ‘Blade’ Reboot & WB’s Next ‘Superman’ Movie Courting The Same Directors

Disney and Warner Bros. are reportedly courting the same black filmmakers for their upcoming superhero projects as mentioned by The Hollywood Reporter. As both Blade and the next Superman film produced by J.J. Abrams are expected to be shot by experienced black directors. An exciting era of inclusion given the budgets expected for the two comic book movies.

Apparently, screenwriter Ta-Nehisi Coates’ black Superman project is expected to have a non-contemporary setting, which sounds similar to the studio’s original plans for Supergirl (1980s). However, it’s unclear when in the 1900s they’ll be aiming for. Instead, Supergirl will appear in The Flash movie (filming in the United Kingdom) played by actress Sasha Calle ushering her directly into the DCEU but the Superman movie doesn’t seem to be joining that corner of the cinematic universe.

The Superman film appears to be moving onto its own track and won’t be part of the universe, as of now. Sources tell THR that Coates is crafting a Kal-El in the vein of the original Superman comics and will have the protagonist hail from Krypton and come to Earth. While the story is currently being crafted and many details could change, one option under consideration is for the film to be a 20th century period piece.

THR is claiming that there is a group candidates that have been looked for both movies.

The names mentioned in the report are Steven Caple Jr. (Creed II), J.D. Dillard (Sleight, Sweetheart), Regina King (One Night In Miami, and Shaka King (Judas & The Black Messiah). It’s certainly an excellent group of contenders but it’s unclear if these names are simply suggestions by the outlet or actually in the running.

The former list can include Creed II’s Steven Caple Jr., J.D. Dillard, Regina King — who got raves for her drama One Night in Miami — and Shaka King, who is popular at Warners thanks to best picture Oscar nominee Judas and the Black Messiah. Some potential directors have met with both studios for both films, even as one agent said the process was “phenomenally early.” 

You might remember that Steven is currently busy with Paramount’s latest Transformers movie about to shoot over in Montreal and Dillard had been previously tasked to co-write a Star Wars project for Lucasfilm.

They also mentioned that Blade’s shoot was bumped from September 2021 to July 2022, giving folks over a full year to complete any outstanding projects before jumping to the MCU. Coates is said not to be delivering his script until mid-December suggesting both projects won’t be shooting until 2022.

SOURCE: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Posted on in Film News

Marvel’s ‘Blade’ Reboot Reportedly Shooting Next July – Assumed To Release Sometime In 2023

It’s interesting to learn that two-time Oscar-winning actor Mahershala Ali (Moonlight, Green Book, Luke Cage) approached Marvel Studios about playing Erick Brooks aka Blade, when they weren’t actively casting or developing a reboot at that point in time. But, the studio seemed game to land Mahershala and announced him for the reboot on the stage at San Diego Comic-Con back in 2019, when large-scale events weren’t panic inducing.

Flash forward to 2021 and we have screenwriter Stacy Osei-Kuffour working on a script with a director expected to be named in the near future.

The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that Marvel Studios originally planned on shooting Blade in September but have pushed those plans back to July 2022. They’re also said to be seeking a director for Blade that sees them going head-to-head with DC Films/Warner Bros. who are looking for director to make their black Superman film produced by J.J. Abrams.

Marvel isn’t rushing with Blade, whose start date was pushed from this September to July 2022, so that the studio can spend time working on the Stacy Osei-Kuffour-penned script.

This likely means that Blade won’t be coming out until 2023. There have been signs that they were hoping to shoot Blade in Atlanta, but that has yet to be confirmed. Given the film’s July start, we’re leaning towards the film taking a summer or fall spot.

While Marvel Studios has confirmed that their plan is keep Deadpool 3 an R-rated film, they’ve been less upfront if they’ll keep Blade for mature audiences or not.

Blade was originally one of the more obscure characters of The Tomb of Dracula comics that suddenly got popular when New Line Cinema and director Stephen Norrington brought the character to the big screen back in 1998, two years before X-Men and helped convince studios that Marvel films could be profitable. The character landed a trilogy of movies starring Wesley Snipes, a short-lived live-action television series, and a Japanese anime series.

Released a year before The Matrix, the original Blade had a lot of the similar looks and aesthetics including use of wire-work martial arts known to be extremely common in Hong Kong action films.

BLADE – A half-mortal, half-immortal is out to avenge his mother’s death and rid the world of vampires. The modern-day technologically advanced vampires he is going after are in search of his special blood type needed to summon an evil god who plays a key role in their plan to execute the human race.

SOURCE: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Posted on in Features

Marvel Has Been Trying To Adapt ‘Shang-Chi’ Since The 1980s

Shang-Chi & The Legend of The Ten Rings looks like it could be going to be another moment for Marvel Studios to give another obscure comic book superhero their own blockbuster film franchise. The Marvel Studios trailer, that debuted on Monday morning, has already earned 24.1 million views just from the Shang-Chi Twitter account (amplified by other Marvel-owned accounts) and Marvel Entertainment’s YouTube channel.

It remains to be seen if this will equal box office dollars but it’s a good sign that folks are indeed ready for an Asian-led superhero franchise from Hollywood and could be an important moment to see more high-budgeted Asian-led blockbusters in the future.

While most people might assume that Shang-Chi was a recent decision at the studio, Marvel has actually been trying to get a live-action adaption going for decades going back to the 1980s.

Brandon Lee in RAPID FIRE (1992)

Inverse was able to speak with former Marvel Productions CEO and President Margaret Loesch, who revealed that Stan Lee met with Bruce Lee’s son Brandon Lee (Showdown In Little Tokyo, The Crow, Rapid Fire) at the Marvel offices for a potential Shang-Chi television series in the 80s. The late Bruce Lee and his film Enter The Dragon had been the template for the martial arts superhero. Sadly, Brandon had a tragic death as he was killed during the filming of The Crow.

There were also attempts to get a feature film back 20 years.

In 2001, Blade director Stephen Norrington was reportedly attached for a feature film of Shang-Chi alongside an early incarnation of Ghost Rider too. He quietly retired after making 20th Century Fox’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and headaches he had during that production. Norrington had originally wanted to cast Jet Li as Blade villain Deacon Frost but the actor was busy shooting Richard Donner’s Lethal Weapon 4. You can tell from Blade that the filmmaker was heavily influenced by Hong Kong action movies with their use of wire-work, a year before The Matrix.

DreamWorks attempted to get things going again in 2003, as Variety reported they had hired Woo-ping Yuen (True Legend) to direct and script from Band of Brothers writer Bruce McKenna. Woo-ping Yuen had been the fight choreographer for The Matrix, Kill Bill Vol.2, Kung Fu Hustle, The Forbidden Kingdom, The Grandmaster, and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Oscar-winner Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain, Life of Pi) boarded as a producer in 2004, a year after his Hulk movie was released. However, the rights to Shang-Chi eventually reverted back to Marvel.

Fast-forward to Marvel Studios being acquired by Disney and in late 2018 Deadline reported that the studio would be seeking a director for their Shang-Chi movie. Director Destin Daniel Cretton was ultimately selected with Canadian actor Simu Liu announced at San Diego Comic-Con 2019 as landing the superhero role.

Shang-Chi & The Legend of The Ten Rings will be released by Disney on September 3, 2021.

SHANG-CHI & THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS – Marvel Studios’ “Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings” stars Simu Liu as Shang-Chi, who must confront the past he thought he left behind when he is drawn into the web of the mysterious Ten Rings organization. The film also stars Tony Leung as Wenwu, Awkwafina as Shang-Chi’s friend Katy and Michelle Yeoh as Jiang Nan, as well as Fala Chen, Meng’er Zhang, Florian Munteanu and Ronny Chieng.

Posted on in Film News

Kevin Feige Sounds Open To More R-Rated Marvel Projects Beyond ‘Deadpool 3’ If They Deserve It

During the TCA (via Deadline), Marvel’s Kevin Feige talked a little about Deadpool 3 and the reasoning behind keeping an R-rating that was previously established with the first two films. He seems to allude that they’re not rushing out to make a whole bunch of mature projects but if that something deserves it they’ll have discussions.

FEIGE: “I think we target everything we’re doing for kids and adults, so I think your question is more adult or R-rated. Other than Deadpool, which has already established itself as a certain genre and a certain rating, that we already said we would not mess with when we started working on Deadpool — which we have — other than that, we haven’t encountered a story or a storyline or a character’s journey that a PG-13, or the tone, or the ratings we’ve been using up to this point has prevented us. We haven’t been held back by. If we ever are, than certainly there can be a discussion that can be had now that there’s other outlets like Star. But that just hasn’t been the case. We’ve told all the stories that we wanted to with the tonality and the rating we have now.”

I think Star certainly opens the door for mature series in the future but I don’t think we’ll see PG-13 characters make the jump to R out of the blue.

However, the way Kevin Feige talks about audiences having expectations about future Deadpool movies being mature feels like that point of view could be applied to the Blade franchise too. It was recently announced that the Blade reboot, titled Blade, The Vampire Hunter, nabbed a screenwriter Stacy Osei-Kuffour (Hunters, Watchmen), but it hasn’t been officially confirmed if they’ll be aiming for a PG-13 or R-rating.

I think it’s worth considering that all three Blade movies are mature (Feige was a producer on Blade: Trinity) and given that Eric Brooks essentially murderers blood drinking vampires an R-rating just might be needed due the nature of the Vampire Nation and the violence the franchise is know for, not unlike the Deadpool films.

Blade really should be essentially an action-horror version of John Wick, but watering down the violence or horror stuff for a PG-13 rating feels like a really bad idea on Marvel’s part. I love the Blade franchise but the films aren’t exactly character driven and while Marvel Studios will likely add that element taking away things we expect seems wrong.

A scene like the blood rave just couldn’t happen in a PG-13 film because of how the MPAA punishes movies for their use of blood. Marvel Studios movies certainly have their fair share of violence but nothing that compares to Blade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEeNoS3XMnk

We’ve seen PG-13 and R versions of both Wolverine and Punisher, but traditionally we know as Blade as a mature anti-hero just like Wade Wilson.

SOURCE: DEADLINE

Posted on in Film News

‘Blade, The Vampire Hunter’: Marvel Selects ‘Watchmen’ & ‘Hunters’ Writer Stacy Osei-Kuffour To Pen Their Reboot

Yesterday, it was revealed by The Hollywood Reporter that Marvel’s search for screenwriters to tackle their upcoming Blade reboot (seemingly now titled Blade, The Vampire Hunter) has ended as the studio has reportedly selected writer Stacy Osei-Kuffour to tackle the reboot’s script. The studio is said to have been looking for black writers for the last six months that could jump onto their new incarnation.

Stacy is no stranger to comic book or genre project as she previous worked on HBO’s Watchmen and Amazon’s Nazi-hunter exploitation homage Hunters. A perfect choice if you ask me given those her credits. This will make her the first black female writer to work on a Marvel Studios feature film.

Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali is taking over the role of Eric Brooks aka Blade made famous by Wesley Snipes starting in 1998. The success of that first film led to two sequels along with messy live-action televisions that aired on Spike TV. It also predates the release of Fox’s X-Men by two years and proved that feature film adaptations based on Marvel Comics characters could connect with audiences, and make money.

Blade is a half-vampire which allows him to be immune to sunlight leading to his nickname, The Daywalker. He has the strength and speed of a vampire along with their thirst for blood. In the films, he used a serum to keep his thirst at bay. It remains to be seen how much of the established film lore will survive the new MCU version.

We’ll have to wait and see what their angle for the reboot as the trilogy (Blade: Trinity was produced by Kevin Feige) is best known as an R-rated genre hybrid of martial arts action and horror. If Marvel Studios is keen to keep Deadpool 3 an R-rated film there is a likelihood that Blade, The Vampire Hunter could be targeted towards adult audiences given that kids really don’t identify the character or for certain age groups even know he exists.

The next big step will be hiring a director.

While no names have been circulated to be in the running, I’d love to see Rick Famuyiwa to be considered as his work on Lucasfilm’s Star Wars series The Mandalorian has proven he can play within a large established sandbox and also contribute to it at the same time.

As they’ve only just announced a screenwriter, I don’t think the Blade reboot is going to be shooting in 2021 as Marvel is currently busy with productions such as Spider-Man 3, Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness, and Thor: Love & Thunder filming in Atlanta, London, and Sydney respectively. They’re also expected to begin shooting Ant-Man 3, Captain Marvel 2, and Black Panther 2 later in the year.

A release date for Blade, The Vampire Hunter has yet to be announced.

SOURCE: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER