BLADE Director Bassam Tariq Shares His Excitement For The Film and Explains "It's Not as Boxed in" as People Think it is
Not long ago it was announced that director Bassam Tariq (Mogul Mowgli) would be taking on Marvel’s Blade with Mahershala Ali playing the title character.
Blade is a human-vampire hybrid thanks to his mother being bitten and killed by a blood-sucker during childbirth. The character was created by writer Marv Wolfman and artist Gene Colan, and he made his first appearance in the comic book The Tomb of Dracula #10 in July of 1973.
The script for the film is being written by Stacy Osei-Kuffour (Watchmen). Obviously, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige is producing.
The director was recently a guest on The Playlist Podcast and he talked about how excited he is to take on the project. He also explains that because the character doesn't really have a specific canon in the comics, he’s not worried about sticking to any particular canon for the character. While the director doesn’t go into any great detail on the film, when talking about his excitement, he shared:
"What I will say it's like, it's not that I felt it was, I didn't think that this was gonna happen. You know what I mean? Just to be very honest, I'm honored, and it's a privilege. I'm here in service of Staci Osei-Kuffour, who is the incredible writer that's writing the film. She wrote on Watchmen, she wrote also Pen15 and Power and The Morning Show, she's just a phenomenal presence and a juggernaut in her own right, and Mahershala. For me, it's really working in their service, and I think that's how I'm trying to take it day by day because, to think of anything more is tough."
Tariq went on to talk about how Marvel takes "big swings for a big studio," and goes on to say, “I can't say anything about it, but I'm so excited about what we're doing, like I'm so excited ... and I can't wait." The filmmaker went on to talk about the Blade character, saying:
"What I can tease about it is that we care about character, it's very important for me, and character is something that ... I don't think of genre, I think of character, and where our character has to go is gonna be really important."
He then discusses how there’s no real Blade canon that he feels he needs to follow, saying:
"What's so great is it's not as boxed in as I think people imagine it to be, which I thought it was. But it's quite exciting. And I think the reality is there no Blade canon. If you ever read the comics, they're always changing. "Oh it's this story, it's this story.' What's the canon? It's not like Peter Parker. His name is Peter Parker. In some comics, his name is Fred H. Blade, you know, instead of Eric Brooks. So it's an interesting thing. Unfortunately, the runs never lasted that long, and there have been some interesting and exciting waves. But I can say it's character first."
Some Marvel Comics fans might raise their eyebrows to that statement, but character first, and a great story. That’s the most important thing and I think Marvel has been doing a great job with that in films that they’ve produced. I can’t wait to see what Tariq, Kevin Feige, and the rest of the creative team have in store for us!
Via: /Film