Overview
- The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday and opened to strong reviews with early aggregator tallies reporting near-perfect scores.
- Mahershala Ali stars as Latif, a devout Muslim contract killer who must care for his three children after his wife’s death, and the film foregrounds questions of faith, family and moral violence.
- The project grew out of an aborted Tariq–Ali Blade reboot that Tariq developed for roughly 18 months and that Ali has since said he has left and will not play in the MCU.
- Tariq has detailed that his unmade Blade was partly set in the 1920s and involved costume work by Ruth Carter, and he says working with Marvel taught him to build audience 'cheer moments.'
- Amazon MGM Studios will release the movie in U.S. theaters on Sept. 25 and the film’s critical reception has reframed the narrative from a Marvel development failure to a successful creative pivot for the filmmakers.