This might be the final stake in the heart for Marvel’s Blade. Previously scheduled for release on November 7, 2025, the Mahershala Ali vampire film has been removed from Disney’s release schedule. In its place is Predator: Badlands, the spiritual follow-up to Prey from director Dan Trachtenberg.
In addition, Marvel dated three new movies for 2028: February 18, 2028; May 5, 2028;, and November 10, 2028.
So let’s take these one by one. Pretty much everyone had a sense that Blade was not making its 2025 release date. Marvel already has three films coming out in 2025 (Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts, The Fantastic Four: First Steps) all of which are well into production. Blade, as you may remember, lost its latest director Yann Demange back in June, which wasn’t the first time that happened. Being taken off the release schedule is never a good thing but it’s not, necessarily, the kiss of death. Sony did something similar with Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse and obviously that’s happening. It just means more time is needed. io9 reached out to Marvel and a source there reiterated what Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has been saying for some time now. Marvel wants to make Blade, but it doesn’t want to make it just to make it. It has to be right and it doesn’t want to rush just to hit a release date.
Scooping up that release date though is Predator: Badlands, the freshly titled follow-up to Prey from director Dan Trachtenberg and starring Elle Fanning. Previously, we’d just been calling it Badlands but now that it’s officially getting a theatrical release, we guess Disney added the franchise name on there just to be safe. The film was shot in New Zealand and, though it’s not a direct sequel to Prey, is expected to be in the same universe.
More to come…
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