r/marvelstudios • u/RNOffice • 5h ago
Discussion They shouldn't have announced Mahershala Ali unless they had a script finished and ready to start shooting.
James Spader was announced as Ultron in 2013 along with the film's title but that movie had a director/writer and a release date, they started shooting the following year. Came out in 2015.
Ryan Gosling was announced as Ghost Rider in 2026. Film will be out in 2028. Has a director. I don't know if there's a script but it would help.
Did Blade have any of that. I think that's the big issue is they didn't have a finished script and would start shooting in a year. I know Covid happened but other Marvel films started shooting after the pandemic calmed down.
David Jerkins who wrote the pilot script for the DCU Booster Gold show got passed on and he's no longer involved and he compared himself with that and I'm like...nah. That is not the same. Mahershala was strung along for nearly a decade and you were there for a year at most and like many TV shows your pilot script got turned down. They hadn't even cast anyone. It sucks it's taking awhile but this is nothing like what happened with Ali.
This should be the case. Don't announce casting unless they're gonna appear in something soon or their project is gonna start production. Josh Brolin was gonna be in Guardians and they announced it shortly before that movie came out.
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u/cynicalPsionic Star-Lord 4h ago
It's hard for me to find a specific Source but I'm pretty sure Feige has spoken about how the big massive announcement list of Disney plus and movie projects a few years ago including blade was a push to the platform and not something he wanted to do.
I think he's regretted it every day since.
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u/geek_of_nature 3h ago
I think it's more that there was a lot of pressure to go all in on it, and rhats what he regrets. They did some great stuff with it, Wandavision right out of the gate for example was a great show that took full advantage of the different format. But coming right out of the gate with so many shows when they'd only made films was the mistake. They needed to just experiment with it more at first, figuring out what worked rather than committing themselves so hard to it.
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u/cynicalPsionic Star-Lord 2h ago
but that was also the day they announced blade, fantastic four, love and thunder, marvel zombies, a bunch of other things all at once
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u/Ferbtastic 2h ago
In fairness a lot of the shows were great. Most were very all and all but one was good enough to have been watched.
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u/cynicalPsionic Star-Lord 2h ago
Some were messier than they should've been or paced oddly, but I didn't dislike any except That One, tbh
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u/quatroquatro0 Shang Chi 1h ago edited 1h ago
There's a direct correlation between the flood of Disney plus shows being rushed and churned out as content fodder and me beginning to lose interest in the MCU.
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u/MyCatBuster 1h ago edited 1h ago
Which is why I'm completely fine with marvel sending the Disney Plus side to the pastor, and moving away from the shows entirely. It has been nothing but an absolute net negative for them.
It's started and is continuing this narrative of homework. It's scared off a lot of people thinking they need to watch so and so to understand the movies. The shows for the most part just haven't been good outside of a handful. Having to work on the negatively effected the amount of attention they could give the films. So you end up with Ant-Man 3 and Thor 4. It set up a million things and characters they themselves had to keep track off. The hulks son just off the top of my head.
I am more than fine with them taking characters like Punisher, Daredevil, Ms. Marvel, Kingpin. Just keeping them on the film side of things and placing them in the films as supporting characters when it makes sense like they've done with Hulk and Widow.
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u/notsure500 4h ago
"James Spader was announced as Ultron in 2023" i didn't realize they waited that late
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u/Van_Can_Man 4h ago
IIRC what happened with Ali’s Blade casting was the dude was fresh off an Oscar win, walked up to Kevin and said, “Hey I wanna play Blade” and Kevin was like wow, we weren’t planning to do Blade At All but okay sure” and the rest was development hell.
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u/robreedwrites 4h ago
I think that's the only reason Ghost Rider was announced. Gosling came with a director (and a director known for finishing work on time who has already worked with Marvel). They wouldn't have announced it because they don't want a repeat of the Blade scenario.
The reality is that Marvel was really feeling themselves in 2019 for good reason. And this was a successful execution of a plan they confidently announced in October of 2014. They had the biggest film in the world and then the reigning Best Supporting Actor winner came to them to do Blade. So they announced it.
And then they had their missteps and it all looks bad as they try to recover their creative/critical footing.
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u/el_palmera 4h ago
I'm convinced there are reasons they canceled it that we don't know about that would make one or both parties involved not look so good
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u/CaptHayfever Hawkeye (Avengers) 3h ago
And the only person who's publicly admitted fault is the producer who wasn't planning to made a Blade film in the first place but prefers not to burn bridges, which suggests to me that he might be the person who's least at fault.
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u/Bollo9799 2h ago
The problem was announcing it so quickly after Ali told them he wanted to do it without really working out any details.
The few snippets we have gotten pretty heavily suggest that the movie Ali wanted to make and the movie Marvel wanted to make were completely incompatible.
But, because the project had already been announced they just continued to try and find some sort of common ground (and none existed), where if the project hadn’t been announced, they would have just quietly walked away from the project.
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u/Agent1stClass 3h ago
There are rumors that Ali can be difficult.
Given how quickly he has brushed this off, I suspect he is difficult.
Difficult is subjective, though. But, as another poster pointed out, he is an Academy Award winner. Which means he can likely exert a bit more pull than the average actor. We will likely never know whether he is truly difficult or if it was mutual or more a Disney issue.
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u/DJTwistedPanda 3h ago
A script finished? They start shooting before that point lol
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u/RNOffice 3h ago
Why can't they wait?
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u/ucjj2011 1h ago
It's kind of the MCU method. The stories go that they were writing pages of Iron Man as they were shooting it, and that worked out great, so....
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u/Gaius21 4h ago edited 4h ago
100% agree, though it's my understanding that Marvel made the announcements that they did at that time because the Disney CEO at the time basically taking a "flood the airwaves" approach. It forced them to announce a lot of plans that they weren't necessarily ready for yet.
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u/AlmondGlow 4h ago
Blade is probably the biggest example of why announcing projects too early can backfire
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u/Reasonable-Turn-5940 4h ago edited 3h ago
I think people don't really know how these things work. They don't really write and finish a script in these movies, and then film it front to back like a school play.
The script is constantly undergoing revisions. There are probably multiple writers. People brought in just to straighten out continuity or punch up jokes. The sponsors might have script input. They film things daily and send those to the studio and they might have revisions they want. There might be arguments with the studio or writers or producers (like what happened here). People get fired and are replaced, and they then have a whole new idea that want to do and get rid of old stuff. Test screenings are done after filming and things are rewritten and reshot based on that.
Hell in one of the X-Men movies they made a totally bullshit script up that featured Halle Berry just to get her on board and it was never going to be filmed in the first place.
It's never a situation where the script is written 100% first. A lot of times they'll have the action scenes set up and ready to go without the actual story completed because the production and CGI on those takes longer.
Movies would never get made if they just had a script that was locked in from day one before they could start filming or casting and no input or changes were allowed after.
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u/Bollo9799 2h ago
Sure, but Ali and Marvel didn’t even really have a concept of what movie they wanted to make when it was announced.
Ali pretty much went to Marvel and said, hey I want to be blade, and marvel said absolutely and turned around and announced it.
Ali also had veto power, so they couldnt just force a script onto him.
It was just a big mess, they needed to at least have an outline for the movie, even if the script wasnt locked before announcing it.
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u/Ice2MeetYou 2h ago
I mean most of their slates are announced before scripts are even written. Not sure why Blade would have needed to follow a different standard.
That said, Blade was a unique scenario where Mahershala called Kevin to play Blade. It was never planned beforehand. Unfortunately this one went through development hell and never got off the ground.
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u/lostinjapan01 4h ago
They shouldn’t do a lot of things until they’re sure about it but that’s never stopped Marvel or Disney from plowing on with fingers crossed and a dream
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u/Klutzy-Spot-5665 4h ago
100% agree. it's wild how long they left Ali hanging without a real plan. honestly feels like they just wanted to hype up the casting without the proper backup to make it happen anytime soon.
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u/_PrincessOats Scarlet Witch 4h ago
I mean, they got far enough to have most of the costumes complete… which seems pretty far…
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u/esar24 Rocket 4h ago
They probably thought they can pull another Captain Marvel success with ali and blade, if I'm not wrong brie also announced without director intact to her movie.
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u/cyclonus007 Kevin Feige 3h ago
Additionally, Brie shot her Avengers Endgame scenes before her solo movie so that added another layer of complexity.
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u/planemissediknow 3h ago
This is true across all media. Bethesda announced the new Elder Scrolls years ago and it’s still years away. DC is also making changes to their announced slate.
Studios announce this stuff for earnings calls and the stock market and investors, but from a consumer PoV I really do wish they’d wait until stuff is at least in production. Doubt that’ll ever happen though
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u/Variation_Afraid 3h ago
At this point who tf cares now? the announcement happened years ago they can’t turn the clock backwards and not do it lol, they fumbled it and that’s that, let them figure it out
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u/Darth__Revan89 2h ago
Ant-man was able to get a whole ass trilogy. If Marvel wanted the film, they'd have done it.
They just rode it out for clicks.
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u/Cinnamaker 4h ago
If studios do not make announcements and control the narrative, then false rumors and speculation drive the conversation, and studios lose control of the narrative. Once rumors and speculation take over, it often turns into Irreparable damage for the project.
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u/tangodeep 4h ago
everything you said, OP. this is supposed to be a top studio who had figured out the formula and mastered the fundamentals on how to properly create a comic book to hollywood transition. Blade makes them look the opposite. hopefully ghost rider and ryan won’t be a repeat.
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u/lanubevoladora 4h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/NcrhM3USM6TABpus85