Actor Aaron Pierre confirmed that he has exited the troubled and delayed Blade at Marvel Studios. More on his comments below.
Marvel’s Blade has suffered yet another setback. The long-gestated project, which has gone through several writers and strike-mandated delays, has now lost one of its cast members.
Aaron Pierre confirmed to Variety that he won’t be seen in Marvel’s vampire hunter film.
“Early on, there were conversations,” Pierre said on the red carpet at the 55th NAACP Image Awards. “As the project evolved, I’m no longer part of that — [no longer] attached.”
We first reported on Pierre’s involvement in the project in February 2022.
Blade appears to be stuck in some form of production hell at the moment. The film was originally slated for a 2023 release with Mahershala Ali joining the project as early as 2019, but Blade has had a cursed production so far.
Original director Bassam Tariq exited the project in September 2022 and Yann Demange was brought on to replace him. Stacy Osei-Kuffour, the film’s original writer, was also replaced with a revolving door of writers, reportedly including Marvel regular Beau DeMayo, who was also showrunner on X-Men ‘97 until he was fired from that role just last week.
Blade is now scheduled for release on 7th November 2025, but it’s unclear whether production can get underway quickly enough to make that date.
The last we heard about Blade was Ali’s comments to Entertainment Weekly in December 2023. “We’re working on it. That’s the best I could tell you,” Ali said. “I’m really encouraged with the direction of the project. We’ll be back at it relatively soon.”
Pierre, however, likely won’t miss being in Blade. The actor is reteaming with Barry Jenkins, with whom he worked on Jenkins’ ambitious Prime Video show The Underground Railroad, for Mufasa: The Lion King, in which Pierre will play Mufasa himself.
The actor is also set to appear in Jeremy Saulnier’s Rebel Ridge, replacing John Boyega in what the director described as a “tumultuous” production. We recently caught up with Saulnier to chat about his career and, indeed, Rebel Ridge. You can read that chat here.
