Marvel Studios has enough project on its plate without having to worry about introducing Blade into the franchise, but should the MCU ever call on the services of Eric Brooks, Wesley Snipes seems more than ready to reprise his role.
When the possibility of bringing back this vampire-slaying series was recently raised on Twitter for the umpteenth time, the star was on hand to respond, writing that he’d be game to return but it’s not really up to him:
“Up to Marvel….my teeth still sharp”
A few months ago, Snipes offered a longer and more optimistic answer in an interview with Vice, explaining how he’s been speaking with Marvel Studios about if and how Blade could be coming back to our screens:
“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.”
Of course, Marvel is rarely the type to rush into things, and in the wake of the Disney/Fox deal, the studio will have a whole load of newly acquired, more famous, and arguably more MCU-friendly characters, which may push Blade further back in the queue. Nonetheless, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige made it clear last year that the possibility of a reboot has at least passed through his mind. And while it’s a potential issue that the property’s bloody spectacles may not fit the tone of the MCU, the Netflix shows suggest there’s still a route for darker affairs (or at least there was).
That being said, if Blade ever did enter the franchise, then it wouldn’t necessarily be Snipes playing him. After all, retroactively integrating the first three movies into the MCU sounds like a continuity nightmare. With that in mind, there’s been some speculation that Eric Brooks’ teenage daughter Fallon Grey could be the saga’s Blade equivalent.
Suffice to say, this could all go in a few different directions right now, but so long as we’re in the habit of rebooting late-’90s vampire-slayer properties, surely we can find some way of bringing Blade into this ever-expanding universe.