Since Marvel announced Mahershala Ali would star as the vampire hunter Blade at 2019’s San Diego Comic-Con, news on the Phase Four Marvel Cinematic Universe film has been few and far between, but now we have our first major update as The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that Marvel Studios has hired Watchmen’s Stacy Osei-Kuffour to write Blade, The Vampire Slayer.
Osei-Kuffour is a playwright who was previously nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for Hulu’s comedy series Pen15. She later joined HBO’s limited series Watchmen, a sequel to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ groundbreaking graphic novel, as story editor, as well as Amazon’s Nazi-hunting series Hunters.
Osei-Kuffour’s hiring for the Blade reboot makes her the first Black female writer for a Marvel film. THR notes Marvel spent six months with Mahershala Ali searching for writers for the film and met with predominantly Black writers.
Blade, The Vampire Slayer follows Blade, a half-human half-vampire whose mother was bitten by a vampire during childbirth. The character was created by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan in 1973’s Tomb of Dracula #10. Since then, he has become a popular character who has appeared in his own comic. Wesley Snipes starred as the vampire hunter in a trilogy of films beginning with Blade in 1998, which is still considered to be a favourite among comic book films.
While Ali will star as Blade in the new film, this is not his entry into the MCU as he starred in the first season of Netflix’s Luke Cage as Cottonmouth, a gangster who tried to control Harlem and came in conflict with Cage.
Ricky Church – Follow me on Twitter for more movie news and nerd talk.
