Beau DeMayo is becoming a go-to-guy for Marvel Studios. Part of the writer’s room for Moon Knight and the head writer and executive producer of X-Men ’97, the revival of the iconic X-Men: The Animated Series, it looks like DeMayo may have joined the crew of one of Marvel Studios’ most anticipated feature films, Blade.
While Disney has not commented officially on it, DeMayo has taken up temporary residence in Atlanta where Blade is in pre-production. In a recent Instagram post first pointed out by a Murphy’s Multiverse Discord patron, DeMayo showed off the Atlanta skyline from what he called his “new office.” While there are other Marvel projects underway, as a writer DeMayo would almost certainly not be joining one that was already deep into production. After running through the possible scenarios, Blade becomes the only logical choice. The start of principal filming has been delayed several times, recently pushed from an October kickoff to November, potentially allowing DeMayo a pass at the script.
Stacy Osei-Kuffour was brought on as the film’s writer in February of 2021 and the studio had originally intended to begin production in late Summer of 2022 ahead of the project’s November 3, 2023 release date. Looking back at the bread crumbs, it’s likely that DeMayo has been attached to the project for a month or two now to polish up an already finished script by Osei-Kuffor rather than completely rewrite the story. Having multiple writers take a pass at movie scripts has become a fairly common practice at Marvel Studios, using the opportunity to take advantage of the strengths of different writers. Having DeMayo in Atlanta as pre-production gets underway is entirely in line with Marvel Studios’ past precedent and gives the new writer time to work intensely and closely with the film’s cast and crew to ensure the script is tight before filming begins. At this point, there’s no expectation of the film’s release date being delayed, keeping it on track for a late-2023 release.
