Wesley Snipes Confirms He Isn't Involved In Marvel's Blade Reboot Movie
Blade star Wesley Snipes unsurprisingly confirms he has no involvement in the upcoming movie reboot of the Marvel vampire hunter franchise.
Wesley Snipes confirms he isn’t involved in Marvel’s Blade movie reboot. Released in 1998, Blade starred Snipes as the title Marvel comics antihero, a half-human vampire slayer. With a box office take of $131 million on a budget of $45 million, the film was successful enough to launch a trilogy ending with 2004’s Blade: Trinity.
Despite its reputation as the original Marvel movie, Blade of course has little in common with the MCU of today. Rather than being a fun-for-all-ages adventure, the Blade trilogy is a dark saga full of R-rated violence that speaks to fans of adult comic book fare. Perhaps this dark sensibility is why Blade has remained absent during the golden age of the MCU, leaving the stage clear for more lighthearted heroes like Captain America and Thor. But Blade’s hiatus is in fact about to end as Marvel plans on rebooting the franchise with a new movie starring Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali as the titular Blade. Given the grim and violent subject matter of the Blade comics, the reboot figures to be something of a departure from the relatively family-friendly MCU.
But where does the rebooting of Blade leave original trilogy star Snipes? Completely out of the loop apparently. As Snipes himself revealed in a new interview with Uproxx, he has nothing to do with the new Blade movie starring Ali:
I don’t have any involvement, but I support the young artists and I support Marvel in their business decisions. 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.
Though he’s not coming back for Blade in any capacity, Snipes did tease two upcoming projects that he said are going to “smoke all of the Blade stuff.” As Snipes explained:
We have two things. We have one which is a female action franchise. And also what we call our Blade-killer, our Blade on steroids. And we set our character in the world of shape-shifters 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.
It remains to be seen exactly what Snipes’ two “black belt action” projects are about, but he’s selling at least one of them as a direct competitor to Blade, which is interesting to say the least. Snipes of course has found himself on the outs in Hollywood for quite some time (at least partly by his own fault, as he engaged in some notably bizarre behavior earlier in his career), though recently he’s enjoying something of a comeback thanks to his hilarious role in Dolemite Is My Name along with his upcoming part in Coming 2 America (both projects starring obvious Snipes-booster Eddie Murphy). It’s yet to be seen if Snipes’ “Blade-killer” project helps him re-establish himself as an action hero, but at least it seems he has some plans in that regard.
As for the completely Snipes-free Blade reboot, details on the plot are hard to come by. The original movies were of course R-rated, and fans are hoping Disney and Marvel will stick with that rating with the new movie. Things look bleak on that front however after Kevin Feige recently said Deadpool 3 is the only R-rated project currently in development from Marvel. If the new Blade indeed goes PG-13 as Feige seems to be implying it will, there will be a lot of upset Blade fans. It’s already bad enough, in the eyes of many a Blade booster, that Snipes won’t be along for the ride in the new reboot. Making the new Blade PG-13 might be one blow too many for fans of the ultra-violent vampire hunter.
Source: Uproxx