John Wick director Chad Stahelski might be about to set his long list of other projects aside to go and sort out Marvel’s seemingly-stuck Blade movie.
If Marvel’s casting announcement for Avengers: Doomsday swallowed up five hours of the lives of those who chose to watch it, we can only imagine how long the studio plans to take to officially announce some news of real significance: Chad Stahelski, (yes, that Chad Stahelski) is heavily rumoured to be stepping into the director’s chair on Marvel’s beleaguered Blade production.
Getting the director (and general overseer) of the wildly successful John Wick films onto Team Marvel would represent a major coup for the company. Not least because his schedule is crammed with upcoming projects and because Stahelski is very much tied up with overseeing all things John Wick at Lionsgate. The report comes via The InSneider, and although that outlet has a decent track record breaking news such as this, we’re taking this story with a pinch of salt until we hear an official confirmation.
If true though, this would be a massive shot in the arm for Marvel’s troubled take on Blade which has burned through two directors already, plus more writers than Marvel has chairs.
We’re just going to take a second here to imagine what a Stahelski-helmed Blade film could look like and, well… we have to admit, it’s a pretty exciting thought.
Read more: Blade | A brief history of Marvel’s troubled reboot
Firstly, the filmmaker has the clout to be able to direct his own action sequences: Marvel films are in dire need of battles and scraps that are actually crafted, with the climactic battle sequence in Captain America: Brave New World being an example of just how tired and uninspiring things have become.
Then there’s the Mahershala Ali factor. Stahelski has proven now over several films that he knows exactly what to do with a charismatic movie star in a leading action role to imbue them with a mythic quality – the career resurgence of Keanu Reeves in the wake of the John Wick films being evidence of that. Ali is an incredibly gifted performer and fears that his many talents might go to waste on a Marvel movie would certainly be somewhat assuaged should Stahelski step into the fold.
Oh, did we say ‘burned through two directors earlier on?’ Make that three, should the outlet prove to be accurate. It also claims that No Time to Die’s Cary Fukunaga was also attached to Blade at one point, before Marvel decided it wanted a filmmaker who was more ‘studio friendly’.
Will Stahelksi fit that bill? Marvel will certainly have to give him more control than it does to lots of its filmmakers and should this prove to be the case, we might get a slightly different film. More, as always, as we hear it.
