Never forget that vampires are coming to the MCU. In 2019, Marvel announced that Mahershala Ali will play Blade in a movie that’s part of Marvel’s Phase 4. There’s been little news since then, until a major announcement late last week: Stacy Osei-Kuffour (Watchmen) will write the Blade screenplay. She’s the first Black woman to write a Marvel movie.
If Osei-Kuffour’s name sounds familiar, you might have noticed that she’s also attached to co-write the pilot of Hulu’s Binti adaptation (along with author Nnedi Okorafor). She worked as story editor on Watchmen and co-wrote the episode “An Almost Religious Awe,” and also worked on Hunters and Run.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel searched for the perfect writer for six months, only seriously considering Black writers, and Ali was involved with the process. There’s no word yet on who might direct Blade, but there’s also been no whisper of a release date—not even a year.
It’s been almost two decades since the last time the hybrid vampire hunter appeared on screen, in 2004’s Blade: Trinity. But Wesley Snipes’ Blade didn’t have any superhero antics to consider, or the continuity of 20+ films to comply with. Will Blade take place in the multiverse? Drag vampires into the same world with your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man? Are there vampires in space? It’s going to be so interesting to see how Osei-Kuffour fits Blade into all this.
