In recent years, Wesley Snipes has repeatedly expressed interest in returning to the role of the vampire hunter Blade, which he first played back in 1998. Basically, Snipes portrayed Blade way before superhero flicks became one of Hollywood's hottest commodities, but unfortunately the character has yet to be reintroduced to the cinematic universe.
That could all be changing, as We Got This Covered reported this week that “Marvel is currently planning an R-rated Blade movie,” with Wesley Snipes rumored to be involved.
Keep in mind, this is a rumor, but it does align with previous statements made by Snipes himself and Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige.
“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,” Snipes told Vice in 2018. “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 continued, “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.”
Feige stated back in 2016, “They did ask a long time ago and I think our answer was, ‘No, we’ll do something with Blade at some point.’ That’s still the answer. We still think he’s a great character. He’s a really fun character. There are so many opportunities for the character to pop up as you’re now seeing with Ghost Rider on ‘AGENTS of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ that rather than team up with another studio on that character let’s do something on our own. What that is? Where that will be? We’ll see. There is nothing imminent to my knowledge.”
We Got This Covered also notes that a script is currently floating around that focuses on Blade training his daughter. Again, all rumors at the moment.