Movies
Gareth Evans’ ‘Apostle’ Might Have Found Its Lead
Gareth Evans, who blew audiences away with his martial arts epics The Raid and The Raid 2: Berandal, has locked down his next project, which will be a period thriller by the name of Apostle. The film, which sounds like it has dashes and elements of the “Safe Haven” short he did for V/H/S/2, has also announced that The Guest star Dan Stevens is in negotiations to appear in the film.
In the film, the man attempts to rescue his sister after she’s kidnapped by a religious cult, which is demanding a ransom for her return. But it soon becomes clear that the cult will regret the day it baited this man, who digs deeper and deeper into the secrets and lies upon which the commune is built.
XYZ Films, Severn Screen and Evans’ One More One Productions will produce the project, with XYZ, which is handling international sales, introducing it to buyers at AFM in Santa Monica. The film is eyeing a March 2017 start of production in the U.K.
It’s no secret that Marvel has struggled immensely to launch a new Blade movie, but recent comments from Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige and Blade actor Mahershala Ali indicate they’ve thrown in the towel on this reboot for good.
Ali was attached to Blade from the start, when it was initially announced in 2019. Mia Goth’s attachment was initially announced three years ago, and both remained on board even as the project faced a series of setbacks that included lining up Bassam Tariq, and later Yann Demange, to helm the film.
Ali and Tariq teamed up recently on a new feature set to arrive this fall, in the wake of Blade‘s constant stalls. And it’s a film the actor wouldn’t have been able to do if Blade was still happening.
“When I look at this and ‘Blade,’ I couldn’t have done both, and the reason this even exists is because that project fell apart and Bassam had the time, space, energy, and focus to go and write this and then re-approach me,” Ali told GQ. “And I was able to use those skills that I had been working on for over a year training for ‘Blade.’ In that way, I feel creatively redeemed on some level, just in my own journey between me, myself, and I.”
The comment is in partial response to Feige, who last week told the Happy Sad Confused Podcast, “I am feeling like a gigantic loser and failure that we didn’t get off the ground with Mahershala. We didn’t want to simply just put a leather outfit on him and have him start killing vampires. It had to be unique. It fell into the time when we started pulling back and saying, ‘Only accept insanely great.’ And it wasn’t ‘insanely great’ at the time. We didn’t feel like, as we often do, you can have a good script and make it a great script through production. We didn’t feel confident that we could do that on ‘Blade,’ and we didn’t want to do that to Mahershala and didn’t want to do that to us.”
So where does that leave Blade?
Feige’s comments certainly indicate that Marvel has thrown in the towel, but if they do make another attempt at Blade, it won’t be with Ali. The actor has officially walked away from the role.
“When I look at what is for me, is it was either this or that — and I’ll take this. No offense to them. I’ve been doing this professionally for pushing 30 years now, and one thing I’ve learned is that what is for you is for you and what is not is not. For whatever reason, that project is not for me. If they wanted to do it, we would’ve done it. So I have to move on, and I have moved on,” he told GQ. “Again, you had me under contract, they have billions of dollars, if they wanted to do the movie, we would’ve done the movie. So we’re not doing the movie.”
That certainly puts the final stake in the project.
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