Beau DeMayo has been one of the writers on Marvel’s troubled big screen Blade reboot – and he has pointers on where things are going wrong.
Whilst nothing official has yet been said, there are rumours suggesting that Marvel Studios may finally have found a Blade script that it is happy with. Should that be the case (and we’ll believe that one only when production begins) then it will mark the conclusion of a harrowing pre-production phase for a project which – for Blade fans – probably feels like it could have been far simpler.
After all, it’s not like Marvel Studios is looking to make Citizen Kane. The simplicity of the 1998 original film starring Wesley Snipes was one of its strengths, with the film establishing a foundation that the Marvel Cinematic Universe would eventually build on to achieve unparalleled box office success over dozens of interconnected films.
Somewhere though, Marvel Studios seems to have overcomplicated things, especially if the claims we heard a while ago about one draft seeing Blade being relegated to a supporting character in his own movie are true. One of the project’s writers, Beau DeMayo, is no longer employed by Marvel and has decided to talk about the process of trying to crack a Blade script that the studio would get behind.
DeMayo was fired after his work on the well-liked animated show X-Men ’97, while several of his Blade drafts were ultimately rejected by the studio’s executives. DeMayo has opened up a little about that process and it’s pretty clear that he also feels that Marvel is in a mess of their own making with the project.
Speaking on X, DeMayo said: “Take a John Wick movie. Give mobsters fangs. Swap Keanu for Ali [Mahershala, the film’s star] , hand him a sword, not a daughter who makes him fret over swinging the hero’s name. Wick cost $20 million to make. Add $10 million for vampire/Darkhold magic VFX, you have $30-40 million Marvel movie. I don’t get why it’s been so hard. Studio’s broken.”
The writer even went as far as offering a few details on one of his three drafts that had been rejected, adding:
“My favorite was a The Raid-style treatment where Blade finds himself defending a rundown tenement of humans from Varney’s vamp hordes until daylight. [It] took place over one night Blade learns from tenant Jericho Drumm that Varney’s attacking because the female tenant who Blade sorta fancies has been magically impregnated with Lilith by tenants who’re secretly Darkhold Cultists. Think 30 Days Of Night meets Rosemary’s Baby.”
Mahershala Ali and Mia Goth are still attached to the film, but there’s no announced director since Yann Demange left the project.
DeMayo has been sharing details on a number of Marvel projects that he was once part of. This includes the problematic upcoming reboot of Blade. As he detailed in posts on X/Twitter, he had a simple – and relatively cheap – suggestion for how to make Blade a success.
“Take a John Wick movie. Give mobsters fangs. Swap Keanu for Ali, hand him a sword, not a daughter who makes him fret over swinging the hero’s name. Wick cost 20 mill to make. Add 10 mill for vampire/Darkhold magic VFX, you have 30-40 mill Marvel movie.”
“ I don’t get why it’s been so hard. Studio’s broken. I wrote 3 drafts and a dozen outlines in 3 impossible months, my fav was a “The Raid”-style treatment where Blade finds himself defending a rundown tenement of humans from Varney’s vamp hordes until daylight. Took place over one night Blade learns from tenant Jericho Drumm that Varney’s attacking b/c the female tenant who Blade sorta fancies has been magically impregnated with Lilith by tenants who’re secretly Darkhold Cultists. Think 30 Days of Night meets Rosemary’s Baby.”
The production of Blade has been one of the most notorious in recent Marvel history. The movie was originally planned to have been released by now, but after scrapping its original script for being too boring, and subsequently going through numerous directors and writers, the film just can’t seem to get a handle on what kind of movie it wants to be and what story it wants to tell.
Currently, Mahershala Ali is still attached to star as the titular Daywalker, but with the film having so many changes and issues, it is not surprising there have been reports that he has been ready to walk away on more than one occasion. Originally, the movie was set to be a PG-13 MCU offering, before pivoting to an R-rated movie last year. However, there has still been little movement on the production of the film, although Marvel boss Kevin Feige did provide some insight into why the movie had been delayed back in July, saying:
“I think for the last few years, we’ve been trying to crack that movie. The most important thing for us is not rushing it and making sure we are making the right Blade movie.”
Beau DeMayo, who was previously set to write the MCU Blade reboot, has shared his pitch for a potential fourth Wesley Snipes-led sequel.
It seems that there have been many attempts to nail down the tone and story for Blade’s MCU debut, and while the problems have even drawn mocking from original Blade star Wesley Snipes –who added to the movie’s challenges by making a brilliant return to the character in Deadpool & Wolverine – taking time to get the film right will hopefully pay off in the long run.
