Mia Goth Insists Marvel’s Blade Movie Is Still Happening

It doesn’t matter how high the hill is, the MCU Blade movie is still trying to skate up it. After multiple writers have been attached and moved on, after Kevin Feige and Mahershala Ali have publicly shared frustration with the project, after none other than Wesley Snipes appeared onscreen in Deadpool & Wolverine and declared that “There’s only one Blade,” a new Blade is still coming to the MCU, apparently.

In a cover profile for Elle Magazine, actress Mia Goth not only confirmed that Blade is in production, but also that the delay is a good thing. “It’s for the best that it’s taken the time that it has. They want to do it right,” she explained.

Yes, now more than six years after Ali took the stage at the end of Marvel’s Phase Four panel to don a Blade hat, the movie is still apparently coming. They just need time to get it right.

Goth’s emphasis on ensuring quality is a familiar refrain in discussions about Blade. A year ago, a deep behind the scenes look at the movie’s troubled production revealed that Ali wanted Blade to be his Black Panther, a seismic and culture-defining genre picture.

At the time, that request seemed ridiculous. Up until the 1998 movie starring Snipes as the titular vampire hunter and Stephen Dorff as upstart bloodsucker Deacon Frost, Blade was, at best, a C-level character in the Marvel bullpen. Created by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan for 1973’s The Tomb of Dracula #10, Blade mostly appeared as a supporting character in intermittently published horror comics. Even after the 1998 movie became a hit, spawning sequels and a spinoff television series, Blade only occasionally carries his own comics, and is more notable for showing up in Avengers and Ghost Rider stories.

One senses that even the producers of Blade realize that they’ve set high expectations for a character that may not be able to meet them. Creators such as former X-Men ’97 showrunner Beau DeMayo and True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto have all been involved, as have directors Bassam Tariq and Yann Demange. Treatments have ranged from various stories set in the present to stories set in 1920s New Orleans, in which Goth would play supernatural villain Lilith.

Given how badly Ali wants Blade to be Black Panther, that last plot point must sting. After all, some of the costumes created for the 1920s version of Blade did end up making it to the screen, in a movie from Black Panther director Ryan Coogler, no less. Those elements ended up in Sinners, which is very much the culture-defining vampire movie that Ali envisions.

Given the success of Sinners, it’s hard to disagree with Ali’s vision, even if the ongoing production process makes the movie seem doomed. Maybe when Wesley Snipes’ Blade observed that some mfers always want to skate uphill, he wasn’t judging them. Maybe, just maybe, the uphill skate is worth it. Guess will find out if or when Blade finally hits theaters.