Marvel boss Kevin Feige promises Blade reboot "some day"

One Marvel superhero that fans have long been hoping to see return to the screen is Blade, the vampire hunter memorably played by Wesley Snipes in the action-horror trilogy of the late 1990s/early 2000s.

As the rights to the character, held by New Line Cinema at the time, have long since reverted to Marvel, the question often arises of if/when the comic label-turned-entertainment giant have plans to bring him back.

According to Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios (the film end of the Marvel juggernaut), the answer is… eventually.

Feige tells JoBlo, “We think it would be cool. Some day. My tenure at Marvel started 17 years ago, and there were two things that sort of launched the modern era. One was ‘X-Men,’ which was the first thing that people said, ‘Oh, there’s life here.’

“But a few years before that, there was Blade. A character nobody had heard of at all, had only appeared in a few issues of ‘Tomb of Dracula’ or something, [yet] turned into a big franchise.

“That was always a great lesson for me, where you go, ‘It doesn’t matter how well known the character is, it matters how cool the movie is.’ Which, many years later, would be the reason we do Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange.

“I think Blade is a legacy character now, and I think it would be fun to do something with him one day.”

It’s nice to see Feige acknowledge the importance of the ‘Blade’ movies in forging the comic book movie format which swept through Hollywood like wildfire in the years following the original trilogy.

Action star Snipes took the lead in 1998’s ‘Blade,’ directed by Steven Norrington, and its arguably superior 2002 sequel ‘Blade 2’ from Guillermo del Toro.

Unfortunately, the series fizzled out on 2004’s ‘Blade: Trinity,’ which teamed Snipes with Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel, and saw series screenwriter David S Goyer promoted to director.

Sticky Fingaz subsequently played the title role in 2006’s short-lived ‘Blade: the Series.’

In recent years, Snipes has claimed to have met with Marvel to discuss reprising the role, and there have also been rumours that Marvel were developing a new sequel which would centre on Blade’s daughter.

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