Blade jump-started the Marvel movie machine twenty years ago. Before X-Men and Spider-Man debuted in theaters, Wesely Snipes brought Marvel's lesser-known vampire hero to screens across the world. The success of the first Blade encouraged other studios to green light their superhero projects, and led to the current hero based movie climate we see today. The second Blade movie was also amazing, but Marvel dropped the ball on the third movie once they pulled the creative strings that worked so well in the other films. Blade Trinity dropped just four years before the start of the MCU.
Snipes recently sat down with Vice to speak about the impact of Blade twenty years later. When asked about a possible Blade 4, Snipes had this to say:
"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. All the main execs [at Marvel] and my team, we’ve been discussing for the past two years. 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."
Snipes also seemed less than willing to allow a younger actor to come and reboot the series:
"Who’s that guy? And one that can overcome everybody’s preconceived idea of who Blade is supposed to be," he began. "Skill wise, there’s not a lot of guys out there that dance, that do the martial arts, that act well and can have that Blade flavor. Not a lot of chocolate guys out there. If they’re gonna go chocolate. If they’re gonna go vanilla… ehhhh, I don’t know. Non-traditional casting: I'm with it. I’ve been a beneficiary of it. I don’t know if it would be good for marketing but you never know. So, yeah, it’s a tough one. And they gotta be in shape and have some sex appeal. Fucking Blade has some sex appeal. Maybe you know somebody I don’t. I don’t know."