About a year and a half has passed since Marvel Studios announced that multiple Oscar winner Mahershala Ali would join the MCU to play the famed vampire killer in a new Blade movie. And while the film still doesn’t have a director, it now has a writer.
Stacy Osei-Kuffour has been hired by Marvel Studios to write Blade, according to the Hollywood Reporter. She’s a playwright turned TV writer who was a story editor and writer on HBO’s Watchmen, as well as a writer on Hulu’s Pen15 and story editor on Amazon’s Hunters and HBO’s Run. She was hired after a six-month search during with studio executives worked hand in hand with Ali. Reportedly, Black writers were the only ones seriously considered and Osei-Kuffour’s hiring makes her the first Black woman to write a Marvel movie. (Nia DaCosta, director of Captain Marvel 2, will be the first Black woman to direct a Marvel movie).
Her hiring also marks the first significant movement on the project since the high-profile casting was announced. Fans are surely anxious not just to see Ali as the Day Walker, but to see how Blade—a character created in 1973 who’s best-known from the trio of late ‘90s/early-2000s films starring Wesley Snipes—fits into a superhero world that feels much more bright-colored Spandex than black leather and silver blades. Heck, where do the vampires even come from? It’s Osei-Kuffour’s job to figure it out.
With Osei-Kuffour now on board, focus now turns to looking for a director that can bring her and Ali’s vision for Blade to the big screen. Odds are we won’t be seeing the film for some time, though; Marvel Studios has films dated into 2023, which would be the earliest this would be out. But, Blade does seem to be next-ish on the list, and Osei-Kuffour coming aboard definitely signals progress.
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