You loved (and hated) him as Cornell 'Cottonmouth' Stokes in Luke Cage and now you'll love him even more as the Daywalker. Mahershala Ali is the new Blade in the surprise Marvel Cinematic Universe reboot that was announced at San Diego Comic-Con and it wasn't hard to get the role. All he had to do was ask.
Kevin Feige revealed to Associated Press that finding the new Blade was fairly easy. The Marvel Studios president admitted that Ali simply asked about the reboot and everything just fell into place from there.
"We are huge fans of [Ali], he wanted to come in and meet soon after he won his second Academy Award which was an honor. And within ten minutes, he basically was like, 'What's happening with Blade? I wanna do it.' And we went, 'That's what's happening with Blade. Let's do it,'" Feige said.
Now that's how you flex those Oscars. Ali won his first Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance in Moonlight in 2016. This was followed by another win for the 2018 film Green Book. Needless to say, this man can play any character he wants in the MCU but he chose to be a vampire (or half-vampire, I guess).
Blade was originally played by Wesley Snipes who has been very vocal about wanting to do more films where he could play the character. It is still unclear how Snipes feels about Ali's casting.
The Blade reboot has not yet been given an official release date. Stay tuned for more updates on this story.
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