About two and a half years have gone by since it was announced that Delroy Lindo – whose credits include Get Shorty, Da 5 Bloods, The Core, Malcolm X, and The Harder They Fall (plus more than 65 others) – had signed on to join Mahershala Ali in the cast of the Marvel Cinematic Universe reboot of Blade. While we wait to see if that Lindo will still be in that vampire hunter movie when it finally goes into production (since, after all, Aaron Pierre was also cast in the film at one point, but then written out), The Hollywood Reporter has broken the news that Lindo has been cast in the mysterious genre project that’s coming our way from frequent collaborators Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan – who have worked on Fruitvale Station, Creed, Black Panther, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever together as director and cast member, and have other collaborations that Coogler didn’t direct. This project is shrouded in secrecy, but is rumored to be a vampire story.
Coogler has written the script for this project, which is being described as both a genre picture and a period piece that Coogler will be directing and Jordan is attached to star in. The project is set up at Warner Bros., is expected to have a budget of around $90 million, and is scheduled for a theatrical release on March 7, 2025.
The folks at World of Reel have shared that this movie is RUMORed to be about vampires battling the Ku Klux Klan! They have heard that “Coogler’s film would be set in the ’30s South, centering on vampires, with dual twin roles for Jordan and that it would be heavy in ‘anime influences.’ The ’30s Jim Crow South setting is not an accident. There’s been word that the plot would center on Vampires going to war against the Ku Klux Klan. That actually makes total sense given the setting of the film which is smack dab in the middle, and during, the height of the Klan.“
Jack O’Connell of Unbroken is in talks to play the villain. There’s said to be “a musical element” to Lindo’s character.
This project being kept so tightly under wraps that when it was looking for a studio to call home, “executives and buyers were forced to make the pilgrimage to the Beverly Hills offices of WME, the agency that represents Coogler and Jordan, in order to take a gander on the script and get details.”
Coogler (who is also developing a reboot of the TV series The X-Files) will be producing the film with Proximity Media partners Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian. Rebecca Cho serves as executive producer alongside Will Greenfield and two-time Oscar-winning composer Ludwig Goransson (who won his first Oscar for his work on Coogler’s Black Panther and his second for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer). Production is set to begin in April.
What do you think of Delroy Lindo being cast in Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan’s mysterious genre project? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.