Long before movies surrounding the likes of the Avengers, Spider-Man and Black Panther started dominating cinema screens, there was another Marvel Comics character that lead his own trilogy: Blade. We last saw the half-vampire, half-human in 2004 but now, actor Wesley Snipes has teased two new projects that seem to suggest the titular superhero will rise once more.
Talking to Vice about the upcoming films, Snipes said: “There are a lot of conversations going around right now and we’re very blessed to have the enthusiasm and interest in something coming from that world again.
“We’ve created two projects that fit perfectly into this world and, when people see them, I think they’re only going to have a problem with deciding which one they love the most.”
He went on to name-drop Marvel Studios, which seems to cement the theory that the movies he’s developing are Blade-related.
“All the main execs and my team, we’ve been discussing for the past two years,” he continued. “Everyone’s enthusiastic about it, everybody gets it. But they got a business to run and they gotta square the things that they gotta figure out before they can get to it, I guess. In the meantime, we got a business to run and our own slate of things to do so…
“But the next time you see something in [the Blade universe], mark my words: what we did before is child’s play compared to what we can do now.”
It was in 1998 that the first Blade movie premiered. Snipes brought undead vampire hunter Eric Brooks to life opposite Stephen Dorff and Kris Kristofferson. Its sequel, Blade II, was released in 2002 and last in the series Blade: Trinity – which featured the likes of Jessica Biel and Ryan Reynolds – came out two years later.
All three films were rated R in the US, just as hugely successful comic book outings Logan, Deadpool and Deadpool 2 were recently, so it’s easy to see why Marvel believes now is the right time to resurrect the franchise. Let’s hope these discussions actually go somewhere…