Last night, Marvel ended their epic Comic-Con panel with the announcement that Moonlight and True Detective season 3 star Mahershala Ali will be our new Eric Brooks in an all-new Blade movie. And now we have word from Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige on jut how Ali was cast as the Daywalker. It turns out Ali called up Marvel after winning Best Actor for his role in Green Book, and straight-up told the powers that be that he wanted to play Blade. Plain and simple. Feige says this.

"When Marhershala calls, you answer."

About this exciting news that arrived from Comic-Con last night? Works for me. Mahershala Ali looks like a perfect person to take over the role of Eric Brook AKA Blade to this here movie fan. After all, as mentioned above, Ali recently won an Oscar for Best Actor for his role opposite Viggo Mortensen in Peter Farrelly's Green Book. But not just that, Ali has also accumulated a healthy resume with roles such as Detective Wayne Hays in the recent third season of HBO's hit crime series, True Detective and Vector in James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez's Alita: Battle Angel.

Not only that but the man is no stranger to the Marvel universe having starred as Cornell 'Cottonmouth' Stokes in Netflix's hit adaptation of Marvel's Luke Cage. Ali has also played Remy Danton in Netflix's House of Cards, Boggs in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, and recently provided the voice of Miles Morales' Uncle Aaron in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Basically, this is all to say that Ali is no slouch in the acting department. And that's a good thing too as Ali will be taking over the role of Blade from White Men Can't Jump and New Jack City actor Wesley Snipes. For those of you that somehow might not know, Snipes is famous for playing the Marvel vampire slayer in Stephen Norrington's Blade with Stephen Dorff and Kris Kristofferson, Guillermo del Toro's Blade II with Ron Perlman and Norman Reedus, and David S. Goyer's Blade: Trinity with Jessica Biel and Ryan Reynolds. No word on whether or not Wesley Snipes will have a role in this new take on Blade.

Snipes' original Blade costars included N'Bushe Wright as Dr. Karen Jenson, Stephen Dorff as Deacon Frost, Kris Kristofferson as Abraham Whistler, Donal Logue as Quinn, and Udo Kier as Gitano Dragonetti. Arly Jover joined them as Mercury, along with Kevin Patrick Walls as Officer Krieger, Tim Guinee as Dr. Curtis Webb, and Traci Lords as Racquel.

Stephen Norrington directed the original Blade movie from a screenplay written by David S. Goyer based on the character created by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan. On top of starring in the original film, Wesley Snipes also served as the hit movie's producer along with Peter Frankfurt, Robert Engelman, Andrew J. Horne, and Avi Arad. The first movie featured music by Mark Isham, cinematography by Theo van de Sande, and editing by Paul Rubell. Amen Ra Films and Imaginary Forces were the production companies behind the scenes of the original movie which New Line Cinema unleashed into a theater near you back on August 21, 1998. This story comes to us from The Hollywood Reporter.