Kevin Feige Still Believes ‘Blade’ Will Return One Day
There’s been chatter and rumors now and then about bringing back the vampire-hunting “Daywalker,“Blade. The character was revived for a short-lived television series, but it’s been almost 13 years since we last saw the stylish vamp killer on the big screen. A Netflix series similar toDaredevilandJessica Joneswas rumored after the character rights returned to Marvel, but nothing came of it. After the recent success of R-rated comic book movies likeLoganandDeadpool, it now feels the right time to bring the character back…but according to Marvel Studios PresidentKevin Feige, there are noimmediate plansfor him. But he’ll be back. “Someday.”
This all ties into a lesson Feige learned fromStephen Norrington’s 1998Blademovie.
The film rights toBladereturned to Marvel in 2014. In the years since then, he’s yet to make an appearance in any part of the MCU, while characters like Ghost Rider and the Punisher have shown up on the small screen. Feige toldJoblothat will change at some point and shared this takeaway from his experience on the original film:
We think it would be cool. Someday. My tenure at Marvel started 17 years ago, and there were two things that sort of launched the modern era. One wasX-Men, which was the first thing that people said, “Oh, there’s life here.” But a few years before that, there wasBlade. A character nobody had heard of at all, had only appeared in a few issues of Tomb of Dracula or something, 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 doGuardians 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.
Being a legacy character, as Feige puts it, Blade seems destined to return. Whether it’d be an R-rated movie, as the character calls for, we do not know. But Feige has said he is open to anR-rated Marvel movie:
Not currently planning (R-rated movies), no, but it’s not out of the question. When I started at Marvel 17 years ago, the Blade franchise was doing very well. A lot of people didn’t even know it was based on a Marvel character, because at the time, they sort of hid the fact that it was a Marvel character. So, not out of the question, but not something we’re working on right now.
Another good, R-ratedBlademovie with a Marvel logo in front of it sounds like a guaranteed success on paper. Seeing the character in action today, as opposed to 1998, would probably be a world of difference. Getting to update Blade with today’s effects could be, as Feige says, pretty cool. Unsurprisingly, Wesley Snipes has expressed interest in returning to the character over the years, but if they do decide to reboot and recast, let’s hope they hire someone as charismatic as he was in the first two movies.
