We may never know everything that’s gone on behind the scenes on Marvel Studios’ Blade, but we know for sure that Delroy Lindo is no longer involved. The acclaimed actor is currently promoting Sinners, which hits theaters this weekend, but he has all kinds of other interesting projects to discuss, including those that haven’t been released. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly published on Thursday, Lindo confirmed that he is no longer involved in Blade at all. He shared a bit about the movie he believed he would be participating in, and lamented the character he never got to play.
“When Marvel came to me, they seemed to be really interested in my input,” Lindo said. “And in the various conversations I had with producers, the writer, the director at the time, it was all leading into being very inclusive. It was really exciting conceptually, but it was also exciting in terms of the character that was going to form. And then, for whatever reason, it just went off the rails.”
Lindo couldn’t say much about the character he was fleshing out for Blade, but he clearly wanted to. He said that “there was a Marcus Garvey-esque component to who this man was shaping up to be. I’m not saying that it would’ve been an out-and-out Garvey-ite. Not that, but just in terms of how this man’s philosophy, his ethos, and what was driving him. He was a character who had, very similar to Sinners, created a community, a Black community. He was a character who was the head of this community.”
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Lindo later spoke about another project that seems to have fallen into limbo — the series adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel Anansi Boys for Prime Video. He related it to Blade, saying, “Don’t count your chickens, man. It’s a shame. I could be wrong about Anansi Boys. Maybe it’ll be released. This is another reason to knock on wood. Because there are banana peels all over the landscape. No matter how experienced the level of talent that’s involved, one can always slip up, which brings me back to the knocking on wood thing. S— can happen, man. At any point.”
Blade was actually Lindo’s second near-miss with the MCU, the first coming about a decade ago. The actor was set to star in a spinoff of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. called Most Wanted, which would have aired on ABC. The plan was dropped in the spring of 2016, and Marvel’s TV shows have clearly gone in a very different direction since then. Still, Lindo revealed that the series creators reached out to him to congratulate him when his involvement with Blade was announced.
At this rate, Lindo may still find his way into the MCU one day, but there’s nothing official in the works right now. The actor has plenty of other things to keep him busy, including Sinners, which hits theaters on Friday, April 18th.
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