Despite making his cinematic debut before the modern superhero movie craze, Blade’s been missing from the big screen for a while. Wesley Snipes last portrayed the character in 2004’s Blade: Trinity, and other than the short-lived Spike TV series, he hasn’t seen live-action since. While Marvel later got the rights to Blade back from New Line Cinema in 2011, they haven’t announced any plans to use him in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Snipes has expressed enthusiasm about doing a Blade 4, and now it appears he’s talked with the House of Ideas about Blade’s future.
In an interview with Deadline, Snipes mentioned that he has met with Marvel about bring Blade back, but the character’s status is still uncertain at this point. He said:
The project is controlled by Marvel and we did have a really productive and a wonderful meeting and we discussed a number of things. I don’t know where it’s on their schedule at this point, that hasn’t been decided. I guess it’s still up in the air.
Snipes went on to say that even if Blade 4 or a related film doesn’t happen, he would be happy to work with them on another project. Unfortunately, the chances of Snipes being asked to reprise Blade are slim. For one thing, Marvel takes great care in planning out the MCU, and if they were planning to adapt Blade, it’s more likely they would start fresh. This isn’t a situation like when Judi Dench reprised M for the Daniel Craig James Bond films. They’re more likely to cast a younger actor to play the newest iteration of the vampire hunter, however, that doesn’t mean that Snipes can’t play another role in their Blade plans, or even in another Marvel movie.
One thing worth noting is that Marvel likes to keep their movies PG-13, and a dhampir (a human with vampire genes) slicing and dicing bloodsuckers would push them into R territory like the earlier films. That means it wouldn’t be as accessible to their younger viewers, and thus less profitable. One course of action could be to give Blade a Netflix series. Daredevil has proven to be a safe haven for their more violent material, which is why they’re introducing The Punisher during the Man Without Fear’s second season. Giving Blade his own show would allow him to cut loose over multiple episodes and give fans a faithful adaptation…just as long as they can figure out how to create convincing looking vampires on a smaller budget.
In the meantime, you can catch Snipes on his new NBC series The Player starting this fall.
