Nic Pizzolatto, who created the crime anthology, True Detective, is now on board with Blade, the forthcoming vampire thriller from Marvel Studios that stars Mahershala Ali. Pizzolatto is working with a script that had been created by the Emmy-nominated Michael Starrbury. It’ll be a reunion of sorts for Pizzolatto and Ali, who had starred in season three of True Detective on HBO.

The character named Blade made its debut in 1972, in The Tomb of Dracula No. 10, created for Marvel Comics by writer Marv Wolfman and artist Gene Colan.

Blade is a semi-mortal semi-immortal creature who hunts down vampires to avenge his mother, who was slain by a bloodsucker as she birthed him. About twenty years ago, Wesley Snipes starred in a threesome of screen versions of the Blade saga.

Pizzolatto had been a novelist and short-story writer before achieving recognition as the creator of the True Detective series. Two short stories he wrote while still an MFA student, “Ghost-Birds” and “Between Here and the Yellow Sea” were sold to The Atlantic Monthly, and in 2004 he was among the finalists for the National Magazine Award in Fiction. His first novel, Galveston, published to critical acclaim in 2010, won several prestigious prizes; under the pseudonym of Jim Hammett, he wrote the screenplay for a 2018 film adaptation of the story.

Pizzolatto is also currently working on a new version of the iconic Western, The Magnificent Seven. In 2016, he co-authored a remake of that title, which starred Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, and Ethan Hawke.



Production on Blade is expected to begin late May in Atlanta, under the direction of Yann Demange, who directed the pilot for HBO’s horror series, Lovecraft Country. Production had been on hold after the departure of director Bassam Tariq over creative differences. So far, the cast list for the new production includes Mia Goth and Delroy Lindo.

Marvel is eyeing a release date of September 6, 2004.

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