Marvel Studios’ BLADE with Mahershala Ali Announced

AnonymityX1000

AnonymityX1000

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Neo The Resurrected ONE said:
Oh wait there's more @AnonymityX1000 :mjlol:

All the while, Marvel was bleeding money, with a single episode of “She-Hulk” costing some $25 million, dwarfing the budget of a final-season episode of HBO’s “Game of Thrones, ” but without a similar Zeitgeist bang. The August 2022 series premiere at the El Capitan Theatre foreshadowed what was to come six months later at the “Quantumania” bow: the “She-Hulk” special effects were out of focus in multiple scenes.

There are signs that the flood of product is leading people to tune out. “I’m not prepared to call it a permanent fall. But based on the numbers that go with Marvel podcasts, Marvel-based articles, friends who do Marvel-based video coverage, all of these numbers are significantly down,” says Joanna Robinson, co-author of the New York Times bestseller “MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios,” who is a writer and podcaster at The Ringer. “The quality is suffering. In 2019, at the peak, if you put ‘Marvel Studios’ in front of something, people were like, ‘Oh, that brand means quality.’ That association is no longer the case because there have been so many projects that felt half-baked and undercooked.”

As public criticism mounts, Feige is pulling the plug on scripts and projects that aren’t working. Case in point: the “Blade” reboot. With Mahershala Ali signed on for the eponymous role of a vampire, things looked promising for a 2023 release date. But the project has gone through at least five writers, two directors and one shutdown six weeks before production. One person familiar with the script permutations says the story at one point morphed into a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons. Blade was relegated to the fourth lead, a bizarre idea considering that the studio had two-time Oscar winner Ali on board.

Amid reports that Ali was ready to exit over script issues, Feige went back to the drawing board and hired Michael Green, the Oscar-nominated writer of “Logan,” to start anew. Speculation around town is that the studio is looking to make the film, now slated for 2025, on a budget of less than $100 million — a deviation from Marvel’s big-spending strategy.

With Iger publicly acknowledging the downside of a Marvel TV glut that “diluted focus and attention,” the keepers of the comic book empire are considering some dramatic moves. Sources say there have been talks to bring back the original gang for an “Avengers” movie. This would include reviving Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man and Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, both of whom were killed off in “Endgame.” (That shouldn’t be a stumbling block — in comic books, beloved characters are often killed off, only to be resurrected thanks to the power of things like the multiverse.) But the studio hasn’t yet committed to the idea — if it were able to bring those actors back, it wouldn’t come cheap. Sources say Downey Jr.’s upfront salary for “Iron Man 3” was around $25 million.

Will that solve Marvel’s Majors problem? When the “Quantumania” actor was arrested in March, Disney executives insisted that they could afford to play a wait-and-see game, given that “Avengers: The Kang Dynasty” wasn’t expected to begin shooting until early 2024. But then Majors was dropped in quick succession by his publicists and managers. (He remains a client at WME — the agency where he landed after CAA parted ways with him, pre-arrest, for his “brutal conduct” toward staff, says one source. CAA declined to comment.) In April, other alleged domestic violence victims of Majors began cooperating with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Then, ahead of a key hearing in October, media outlets including Variety obtained a court filing that referenced a police incident in London involving Majors that led his ex-girlfriend to seek medical attention. Making matters even stickier, the ex-girlfriend also worked on “Quantumania” as a movement coach, and the London incident took place while Majors was shooting Season 2 of “Loki.” On Oct. 25, a New York judge denied Majors’ motion to dismiss the case, which ensures that the actor will stand trial in late November. His legal team is attempting to keep some material in the case sealed.

A studio source notes that regardless of the actor’s legal issues, Marvel already had considered moving away from a Majors-led phase because of the box office performance of “Quantumania,” which will struggle to make a profit. “It gave people pause given that ‘Quantumania’ didn’t exactly land,” the source says. (On Oct. 27, Disney removed another Majors film, Searchlight’s “Magazine Dreams,” from the release calendar.)

Recasting Majors is also an option, as Feige did when he replaced Terrence Howard in “Iron Man 2” with Don Cheadle. In fact, Marvel isn’t afraid to change direction, even after making splashy announcements. “Armor Wars” was first unveiled as a series and is now being developed as a feature, while the studio’s push to adapt the comic book “Inhumans” into a feature film generated headlines but is now dormant. (The now-defunct Marvel Television mounted an “Inhumans” TV series in 2017 that ran for one season on ABC.)

Still, there was one bright spot in 2023: “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” which became Marvel’s biggest draw of the year with $845 million worldwide. The fact that it was directed by James Gunn, the guy now running rival DC Studios, was lost on no one.

“With Marvel, it used to be as close to a guarantee as you could get,” says Paul Dergarabedian, a box office analyst at Comscore. “So, going all in on the budgets made sense. ‘Guardians 3’ was a bit overlooked in how successful it was. But that had James Gunn and Chris Pratt, and I think star power is becoming more important. Then there was ‘Quantummania’ with $476 million. Anything under a half billion dollars is viewed as a disappointment. And these overreaching expectations are a result of so much success over the years.”

The key to reinvigorating Marvel may lie with the superhero arsenal that Disney acquired during its 2019 purchase of 21st Century Fox. That deal brought several blue-chip heroes, such as the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, back under the studio’s control. Already fans are geeking out about next year’s “Deadpool 3,” which unites Ryan Reynolds’ merc with a mouth with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, and a reboot of “Fantastic Four” slated for 2025. As a bonus, the Fox additions give Feige an opportunity to reimagine the “X-Men” franchise, the very property he cut his teeth on as a young executive at Lauren Shuler Donner’s production company. Now that the WGA strike is in the rearview mirror, Marvel has started talking to writers about bringing the X-Men into the MCU fold.

While Feige recalibrates, the rest of the industry is anxiously hoping that Marvel’s best days are not behind it.

“Writing the Marvel obituary would be ill-advised,” says Jason Squire, professor emeritus at USC School of Cinematic Arts and host of “The Movie Business Podcast.” “Kevin Feige is the Babe Ruth of movie executives, and Marvel has the most profitable track record in movie history. No question.”
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Wow multiple mentions. I spoke on this article in the MCU Dynasty thread. lol
 
PharaohAtem

PharaohAtem

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ORDER_66 said:
That tweet said blade regulated to a 4TH lead?!!?:hhh::scust::picard: Da fukk!??
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That’s why this cinematic universe is in the damn shape it's in, cause of bullshyt like this :hhh:

atem.gif
 
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