The ongoing wait for Marvel to finally begin production on its long-announced Blade movie forced the Marvel Zombies creative team to pivot its plans for the character.
Speaking to IGN this week, Brad Winderbaum, head of streaming, television and animation at Marvel Studios, told us that the new animated mini-series had initially been developed “believing that there would be a Blade movie out well before.”
Of course, as we now know, that didn’t turn out to be the case — despite numerous attempts by Marvel to get the Mahershala Ali-starring Blade project off the ground, sometimes at a relatively late stage. Ultimately, as uncertainty over the live-action movie continued, Winderbaum’s animation team were forced to pivot their own plans for the character, and ultimately land on the Fists of Khonshu version of Blade that’s featured in Marvel Zombies now.
“We never, in a million years, thought that the Zombies show would proceed a live-action Blade,” Winderbaum told IGN. “We developed this show believing there would be a Blade movie out well before Zombies.
“So the fact this is the first Blade in the MCU on screen is really just kind of a surprising privilege to us, and that’s one of the reasons why we made him The Fists of Khonshu, was that they were discovering Blade in the live-action side, and we knew that we could end up having to pivot if we tried to hew close to what they were creating in live action.
“So by making him a version of Moon Knight, we were able to kind of create something original and have a little bit more freedom with the character.”
While Winderbaum did not explicitly confirm that Marvel Zombies would have once featured Mahershala Ali’s Blade, the suggestion here is that the show’s creative team reached a point where they were unsure enough about clashing with any live-action version that the decision was made to feature a wildly different take on the character — ultimately, the mash-up between Blade and Moon Knight that’s been referred to as Blade Knight. Voiced by Invincible and Starfield veteran Todd Williams, the character stole the show in the first Marvel Zombies trailer, above.
First announced back in 2019 and once set to begin filming in 2022, the Mahershala Ali-starring live-action Blade movie has struggled to get off the ground. To date, all Ali has contributed to the MCU is a post-credits off-screen cameo for The Eternals, where the actor’s voice can briefly be heard.
Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige recently revealed that, after years of pre-production and “three or four” different versions of the film being considered, Marvel had finally nailed down the fact its long-awaited Blade reboot would be set in the modern day.
As for when a live-action Blade will finally materialise, Feige was less certain. Noting that the next few years were already looking busy with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Avengers: Doomsday, and Avengers: Secret Wars (and after that, Black Panther 3 and the X-Men reboot), there was “no sense of urgency” for Blade to launch.
Interview conducted by Jim Vejvoda.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
