Many fans praise the early X-Men and Spider-Man films for being the blueprints for the future Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Well, they’re wrong. That distinct honour should be reserved for 1998’s Blade and Wesley Snipes, who revitalised the entire comic book movie genre with an action horror that’s stood the test of time. Plus, it helped that it made $131.2 million from a $42 million budget.
Wesley Snipes wanted to return for Blade 4
While Snipes’ last time out as the vampire hunter was in 2004’s Blade: Trinity, he never fully closed the door on returning to the role in the future. Marvel Studios had other plans, though, as it cast Mahershala Ali in a new Blade movie.
If Snipes is disappointed by the decision, he isn’t showing it. “I don’t have any involvement, but I support the young artists and I support Marvel in their business decisions,” he told Uproxx. “It’s a beautiful thing. I think he’s a heck of a job. He’s got a heck of a job on his hands.”
His feelings towards Blade
Interestingly enough, Wesley Snipes’ representatives encouraged him to not take the part of Blade when it was first offered to him. Yet, he took the part for one specific reason. “Because I never seen a black vampire that did karate before,” Snipes told Q on CBC. “All of my friends [said] we’ve never seen a cool, Shaft-like vampire that did karate at the same time. You got to do this movie!”
Looking back, Snipes is a fan of the films but refers to them as “white belts” and that he and the crew are far more experienced now. At the same time, he believes that his Blade franchise innovated in many ways, setting the standard for the Marvel films to come.
The upcoming Blade film
In the same Uproxx interview where he referred to the past experiences as gaining “white belts”, Snipes believes everyone has graduated to black belts now. And with the new technology at their disposal and all the experience from before, they’ll be able to deliver something bigger—and better—than Blade. In fact, Snipes believes this new film will “smoke all of the Blade stuff”.
“We call [it] our Blade on steroids,” he said. “And we set our character in the world of shapeshifters and a little bit of time travel. But the action is going to be… Well, we did white belt action in Blade. Now we’re going to do black belt action.”
When will Wesley Snipes’ next movie be released?
As of writing, there’s no information available about when this film will be released or who is even involved in it. It’ll certainly be interesting to see if it arrives around the same time as Ali’s new Blade movie, as it should cause more than a few heated debates among the fans.
There’s no doubt that Snipes is experiencing a career revival as his performances in Coming 2 America and Dolemite Is My Name have caught the attention of both the critics and audience. It’s a shame that he isn’t going to get a chance to reprise his most famous role in the MCU, but maybe his film will be the next best thing.