In a deep dive into the history of Blade, the actor, Wesley Snipes looks back on the modern classic with the rest of the cast and crew.
As the first black cinematic superhero, the 1998 horror action film celebrates its 20th anniversary with the return of the Blade himself in Deadpool & Wolverine.
They also celebrated the anniversary by breaking down the original Marvel universe.
Snipes, who was also the producer, shared that they discussed doing Black Panther, “But that didn’t come to be… Blade seemed like a pretty good replacement.”
However, at the time Marvel was in bankruptcy and David Goyer, screenwriter, noticed that a lower-budget black superhero film was wanting to be made.
Peter Frankfurt, also a producer, shared that “The idea was we would come up with a script for an under-10-million-dollar movie that would be tough and street-like Juice — kind of a hip-hop Marvel movie.”
“It’s not like any superhero movie anybody’s ever seen.”
“It’s got elements of kung fu, it’s vampire, it’s a genre buster.”
“The bad news is, it’s freaking expensive.”
Goyer revealed that from they start they wanted Blade to be a trilogy: “I’m going to pitch you the Star Wars of black vampire films.”
He continued by stating that the studio wanted to make one crucial change: “can Blade be white?”
“I said “absolutely f—ing not. Like, that is just terrible. You cannot do that.”
After that was made clear, the New Line studio head Mike De Luca stated that “I’ll make it for $40 million if you can get Denzel Washington, 35 if you can get Wesley Snipes, and 20 if you can get Laurence Fishburne.”
Blade was Marvel Enterprises first successful film, with many believing the film is the start of the super-hero franchise’s global success.
