Lovecraft Country director Yann Demange and writer Michael Starrbury now become the new mechanics behind the reconstruction of the Blade IP for Marvel Studios. The exit of Bassam Tariq and Stacy Osei-Kuffour marked the end of the erratic road that paved the path for the Mahershala Ali-starring film since its announcement in 2019.
The Marvel heads, in October 2022, had famously declared scrapping the previously designed idea of the Blade script that has been in development for the past two and a half years. The newly appointed Demange-Starrbury team will be serving as the ideators behind what will now be a reboot of the reboot.
Marvel Studios Appoints Yann Demange to Helm Blade
Yann Demange, the French-Algerian director who has famously (and successfully) treaded through Hollywood’s deep waters with Jonathan Majors‘ Lovecraft Country has been appointed as the new director of Blade. Demange will be paired with the Emmy-winning writer, Michael Starrbury who has been tasked with building the Blade script back up from the ashes. This new direction seeks to set right Marvel’s string of disappointing few years when concerned with the Mahershala Ali film and its progress which was sluggishly striving (and failing) to move past the pre-production phase.
Yann Demange’s entry comes in the aftermath of Bassam Tariq’s abrupt although unsurprising exit (he will now serve as Blade‘s producer). The news filtered out after facing months of dissatisfaction, mounting creative differences, and vexing progress with the original script after Mahershala Ali had allegedly been frustrated with Tariq and Osei-Kuffour’s version of the reboot. The team broke apart weeks before filming was set to begin in Atlanta. Marvel now aims at driving the plot toward a darker tangent that has defined the infamous vampire-slayer since his genesis in 1973’s The Tomb of Dracula #10.
Blade Reboot & Development Gets an Optimistic New Start
In an overwhelming update, Marvel seems to have found its way back to the days that defined the early 2000s techno-slasher era of Wesley Snipes‘ Blade trilogy. Or at least, this is what the fandom hopes Yann Demange will be inspired to bring to the forefront of Marvel’s Blade project. The director has made a critical name for himself after the understated success of Lovecraft Country — a mind-bending horror thriller that takes its inspiration from and pushes the boundaries of the well-established oeuvre of the infamous author of all things scary, H.P. Lovecraft.
Also read: Blade Theory: Blade Is After Wanda’s Darkhold For the Montesi Formula Spell That Kills All Vampires
If Demange brings even half the percentage of essence that so well-defined the Jonathan Majors series and its exclusive arena of monsters, creatures, and visually delightful sets, Blade will be on its path to redemption and Mahershala Ali’s film will be a definitive marker of Marvel’s foray into the riskier levels of Disney and its TV-MA aversions. After the horrifically giddy MCU Phase Four, the fandom now demands a palette cleanser and yearns to forget the overly shoddy productions that marred the post-2019 era of the franchise. Blade holds the potential to be exactly that, especially now that Yann Demange is on board accompanied by the brilliant Michael Starrbury.
Blade premieres on 6 September 2024.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
