Fans are baring their fangs as Marvel Studios cast yet another actor to play an MCU Blade, and it is not Mahershala Ali, the star of the upcoming Blade movie. Ali was first cast as Marvel Comics' iconic daw walker in 2019, yet more than a half-decade later, the actor/character has still not made his proper on-screen debut.
The closest things audiences have gotten to Blade's MCU debut have been a vocal cameo from Ali at the end of Eternals and legacy Marvel actor Wesley Snipes reprising his version of the character in Deadpool & Wolverine. And it looks as though fans will have to wait even longer for the Academy Award-winning actor to show up in the super-powered universe, as Marvel Studios confirmed Ali will not be playing Blade in the upcoming Marvel Zombies series.
New information on Marvel Studios' upcoming Zombies streaming show revealed that longtime voice actor Todd Williams will play Blade in the new series and not Ali as many had hoped (via ComicBook).
With Blade confirmed for the new R-rated series months ago, many had assumed Ali would be the one voicing the iconic vampire-killer, marking his proper MCU debut; however, that is not the case.
Williams is best known for playing Titan in Amazon Prime Video's Invincible (where he, funnily enough, replaced Ali for two episodes) and Rick Mason in the acclaimed Spider-Man: Miles Morales video game.
The Blade actor will be joined by big names like Hailee Steinfeld, Florence Pugh, Simu Liu, and Elizabeth Olsen on the Marvel Zombies cast when it crawls from the grave and hits Disney+ starting on September 24. The new four-part series follows a group of Avengers trying to survive in an apocalyptic world ravaged by a zombie virus that has claimed the lives of several super-powered heroes and villains like Iron Man, Thanos, and Scarlet Witch.
What's the State of Mahershala Ali's Blade?
After Mahershala Ali was first announced to be bringing Blade to the MCU for the first time in 2019, the future looked bright for the character.
Rarely has there been a more perfect actor-to-hero pairing in comic book movie casting, yet Ali's take on the iconic Marvel character remains on the bench.
This has largely been because of the lackluster development of the Blade film. At this point, Blade has gone through several directors, a couple of writers, and more than a handful of story treatments, becoming something of a white whale among the MCU catalog of titles.
According to Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige, Blade is still happening, and the studio finally has a direction it is happy to pursue. One can assume Ali was not included among the Marvel Zombies cast simply because they want his debut on-screen to mean something.
The Academy Award winner is nowhere near the only MCU hero to not voice the animated version of is character with names like Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Black Widow all being voiced by sound-alikes rather than the real people.
With rumors swirling of a Midnight Suns movie on the way, and Blade factoring heavily into that story, it would not be surprising if that is where the actor finally arrives on the scene as the badass brute, if it doesn't happen in his solo movie.
