This week saw the Writers Guild of America call a strike after they couldn’t reach a tentative deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, which led to a vote for work stoppage for its 11,500+ members across the film, television, and streaming mediums. Writers are seeking fair compensation, job security, and salaries over gig positions and to block the disruptive use of A.I. in the industry. This has led to multiple shows like “Hacks” to pause production, but it’s now moved into the realm of blockbuster filmmaking as well. Marvel Studios has now hit the pause button on their “Blade” reboot starring Mahershala Ali (“Moonlight”), according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The action-horror superhero flick has been having script issues with the latest hiring of screenwriter Nic Pizzolatto (“True Detective”), meant to get the project in ship-shape before cameras start rolling next month in Atlanta. Apparently, they simply “ran out of time.” While it was still in the pre-production stage ahead of principal photography, the studio decided to pump the breaks altogether until the strike has been resolved. It’s worth mentioning we have no idea how long the strike could take before a deal is reached between the WGA and AMPTP, so this pause could take weeks or even months.
THR adds that both “Deadpool 3” and “Thunderbolts” are expected to go into production as planned.
French filmmaker Yann Demange was set to direct “Blade” with a supporting cast that consists of Mia Goth, Delroy Lindo, and Aaron Pierre. The studio had slated the reboot for a release date of September 6, 2024, but at this point, it’s very doubtful they will hit that mark after these latest delays to production. “Blade” focuses on the half-vampire/half-human character Eric Brooks, who, with the help of his mentor Whistler, tracks and kills vampires.
This could end up becoming a big problem given that many Marvel Studios projects tend to use writers throughout the prep, filming, and post/reshoots stages of their films, as a writer’s strike would cause headaches for studios across the industry. It’s worth reminding folks that the last strike in 2007-2008 (lasting 100 days) took place before the Marvel Cinematic Universe really took a foothold, so Marvel hasn’t experienced anything like this before and is also trying to make an obscene amount of projects at once. We shouldn’t be shocked if more MCU projects also go on hiatus, like “Blade” in the near future if the strike lingers into the summer.
Movies like “Quantum of Solace” attempted to push forward with uncompleted scripts during the last strike by bullish studios/producers and ended up with sub-par films as the final product. Hitting pause might not be the worse thing for these Marvel projects that already needed the extra help on their scripts to simply stay put for the time being. I guess we’ll have to wait to see how long this all takes and how many more productions are affected by the strike.