Actor Delroy Lindo has revealed that he exited Marvel’s beleaguered Blade reboot when the project “went off the rails”.
The film, an adaptation of the Marvel comics character Blade starring Mahershala Ali, was first announced in 2019, and was supposed to be released in cinemas back in 2023.
However, the film has faced multiple delays and reports of creative turmoil behind the scenes, and is currently without a release date.
Lindo, who can currently be seen in the acclaimed blockbuster Sinners, was attached to star in the film alongside Ali, but subsequently left the project.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, the actor opened up about the creative differences that had surfaced during production.
“When Marvel came to me, they seemed to be really interested in my input,” he said. “And in the various conversations I had with producers, the writer, the director at the time, it was all leading into being very inclusive.
“It was really exciting conceptually, but it was also exciting in terms of the character that was going to form. And then, for whatever reason, it just went off the rails.”
Lindo did, however, give some insight into who his character, rumoured to be a mentor to Ali’s vampire-hunting Blade, would be, likening him to the Jamaican political activist Marcus Garvey.
“I’m not saying that it would’ve been an out-and-out Garvey-ite,” he said, referring to the famed figure of the Black Nationalist movement. “Not that, but just in terms of how this man’s philosophy, his ethos and what was driving him. He was a character who had, very similar to Sinners, created a community, a Black community. He was a character who was the head of this community.”
In the 1932-set Sinners, Lindo plays ace pianist Delta Slim, who performs at a juke joint newly opened by twins “Smoke” and “Stack” (both played by Michael B Jordan).
The film, which takes an ambitious dive into the supernatural partway through, has been effusively received by audiences, and set a new record for a horror release on the audience feedback platform Cinemascore.
While Blade was recently removed from Marvel’s planned slate of forthcoming films, franchise boss Kevin Feige has insisted that Ali, a two-time Oscar winner for Moonlight and Green Book, is still set to appear as Blade in a Marvel film.
Everyone is “up to date on what’s going on,” he said. “But I can tell you that the character will be coming to the MCU.”
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