Putting the creepy, invasive, potentially dangerous ramifications to one side, the art of the deepfake has been a gift to movie fans, allowing dedicated fans to both improve on the sometimes-disappointing CGI renderings of Hollywood releases, and bring castings that never happened into some semblance of reality. Following John Krasinski as Captain America and Tom Cruise as Iron Man, among others, Mahershala Ali’s Academy Award winning face has now been pasted over that of Wesley Snipes in footage from the original Blade trilogy.
Now, while the likes of Krasinski and Cruise were merely Marvel castings that almost were, Ali will portray vampire hunter Blade in an upcoming MCU movie. Despite the footage occasionally looking like the implementation of some kind of low budget face/off technology, the clip does demonstrate how well-suited Ali is for the character when he is reimagined under the MCU umbrella. The clip even recasts other key roles, with Ali’s Green Book co-star Viggo Mortensen slotted into the role of Blade’s friend and father-figure, Whistler, originally played by Kris Kristofferson.
Announced during Marvel’s San Diego Comic-Con 2019 appearance, details surrounding Marvel’s Blade reboot are still being kept tightly under wraps. Very little is currently known about the movie, with Ali the only actor attached to the project so far. Earlier this year, the Oscar winning star of Moonlight explained why he was drawn to the titular role of this Marvel character in particular saying, “Since they were having conversations about bringing it back into being, I just wanted to be considered for it because I had definitely a connection, at least in my mind, to Wesley Snipes going back to high school.”
“I just brought it up as someone who really wanted to take on that [Blade] role and tackle that…I love that it’s darker,” he continued. “That’s all in terms of tone. He’s a little bit darker than some of the other ones and so that element was attractive to me.”
Mahershala Ali has been pushing for the Blade role for years now, with the actor keen to re-join the MCU following his standout performance as Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes in Marvel Television and Netflix’s Luke Cage. “I did this Marvel show for Netflix called Luke Cage. So in doing that show, the day it premiered, I had turned to my agent, and I had said, ‘What are they doing with Blade?’ Because I kept hearing they were trying to find a way to remake and put it back together,” the actor previously revealed. “And it was exciting for me to get to be in that Marvel space and TV, but for me, my goal had always been film. But also, being able to participate in television in a very specific way that had real meaning, but my larger goal was to be able to really navigate between film and television.”
No release date has yet been announced for Blade, however clues from the recent Disney Investor Day event suggest it could hit theaters in 2022, between sequels Black Panther II and Captain Marvel 2. This comes to us courtesy of YouTube channel FaceToFake.
