With Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s premiere nearing, and provided everything else stays the same, the MCU is about to go on a rare if brief hiatus. However, while that may come at just the right time, a recent wave of delays from Marvel Studios could be a sign of problems looming ahead for some of Disney's most prized properties.
Namely, the Marvel productions whose schedules were pushed back a few days ago were Blade, Deadpool 3, Fantastic Four and Avengers: Secret Wars, four of the most highly anticipated superhero films in recent memory that will prove what Kevin Feige and company can do with the new acquisitions. Whether it’s the lure of seeing Marvel Studios tackle an R-rated movie with Deadpool, or just the payoff that Secret Wars should deliver for the entire Multiverse Saga, failing in any of these tasks would be catastrophic, so should these delays be taken as a positive or negative signal?
The Marvel Snowball Effect
To paraphrase that quote often attributed to Shigeru Miyamoto a delayed film can eventually be good, but a rushed film will always be bad, and that may just be the underlying philosophy at work for Marvel, especially considering recent reports surrounding the Blade movie. The human vampire seems to be at fault since director Bassam Tariq left the project last month, shortly before it was supposed to start production, which leaves the studio on the hunt for a new creative mind to take the helm.
On top of that, rumors point to Blade’s script currently being drastically reworked and its star Mahershala Ali being frustrated by the constant changes taking place, which ultimately forced the reshuffling. Blade is being pushed back nearly an entire year, which says a lot about the work that needs to be done to get the film rolling again, a movie that also happens to be based on a character that’s not particularly easy to adapt, even more so without the R-rating Blade might need.
This is worsened by the fact that, although Marvel’s roadmap has a ton of empty spaces in Phase Six, Blade already dropped by to say hello in the MCU to his new friend Dane Whitman in Eternals. That’s not his only potential tie-in though, as Blade's street cred made him a likely candidate to join forces with Daredevil, Spider-Man, and Moon Knight who's now confirmed for a future appearance, though the changes would all but kill the first possibility, as it’s hard to imagine someone like Blade being demoted to a mere cameo in Daredevil: Born Again before his real presentation.
The rest of these delays appear to be down to scheduling conflicts stemming from Blade, nevertheless, Fantastic Four finds itself in a similar place having just found its director with no word yet of John Krasinski's return. Regardless of that, the Fantastic Four simply play too big a role in a Kang storyline leading up to Secret Wars, hence why it’s crucial to get these two right for Marvel Studios.
Marvel Deserves The Benefit Of The Doubt
As evidenced by the first two Thor movies, the MCU didn’t exactly have the best versions of their top-tier superheroes coming into The Avengers, what it had was a clear leader in Iron Man that made the entire interconnected universe come together. In their own scale, the Fantastic Four, and Blade or Daredevil on a street level, both represent something similar, they’re the characters Marvel cannot afford to get wrong.
Deadpool looks to be off doing his own thing, and the more he sticks to that, the bigger guaranteed success Marvel should have on its hands, even more so with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine on board. On the other hand, Avengers: Secret Wars's ability to generate hype is only as good as the sum of its parts, out of which the Fantastic Four represent some pretty vital building blocks.
Phase Four is a mixed bag for Marvel, but the danger of screwing up Blade or the Fantastic Four’s introduction is nowhere close to the Eternals flopping or She-Hulk being so harshly criticized. At the moment, those two, as well as Ant-Man 3, Daredevil: Born Again and Captain America 4 represent the biggest investments or turning points for Marvel in the lead-up to Avengers 5 and 6.
The Disney Plus era delivered plenty of Marvel entertainment for viewers, yet with it also comes the realization that not all superheroes are on the same level, there are bigger names that must be handled with surgical precision, hence why the X-Men are still nowhere to be found. At the same time, it means there’s absolutely no need for Marvel Studios to rush its productions and possibly compromise on their quality or their shared identity in the long term.
Kevin Feige earned his place in Hollywood by playing the long game, daring to think years ahead, even with a studio on borderline bankruptcy. That became the most profitable movie franchise ever, so if Marvel Studios thinks Blade needs a deadline extension then fans should be happy to wait.