Will Wesley Snipes play Blade again? Ryan Reynolds pushes for one last ride for “Marvel Daddy”
Written by ABC Audio ALL RIGHTS RESERVED on August 6, 2024
(SPOILERS) While Wesley Snipes‘ return as the half-vampire vamp hunter Blade in Deadpool & Wolverine blew fans’ minds, the guy who made it happen, Ryan Reynolds, is pushing for Snipes to take to the big screen on one last adventure.
While some cite 2000’s X-Men as the start of the superhero explosion at the movies, one could argue it was Snipes’ 1998 hit Blade that kicked it all off.
To a photo of him with his arm around Snipes, Reynolds wrote on Instagram, “There is no Fox Marvel Universe or MCU without Blade first creating a market. He is Marvel Daddy. Please share for a Logan-like send off.”
Reynolds first starred opposite Snipes in 2004’s Blade: Trinity, and in spite of the rumored on-set drama, he reached out to Snipes to see if he was interested in joining the hero-packed Deadpool threequel.
“I didn’t think we would be able to pull it off,” Snipes recently told Entertainment Weekly. “I didn’t think that Marvel was into it, Disney was into it — also because they had Mahershala [Ali] cast for the next upcoming version of it.”
Snipes recalled, “[B]ut [when] you get a call from Ryan Reynolds out of the blue after 20 years, you go, ‘Okay, I got to take this call. … He told me the idea [and said] ‘If you’re in, we’re in.'”
Ali was announced as the successor to the role in 2019, but the project has been mired in development delays, including script changes and the exit of director Bassam Tariq just before production was scheduled to start in 2022.
The delays were even snarked at in Deadpool & Wolverine, with Snipes saying in character, “There’s only ever gonna be one Blade.”
Disney is the parent company of ABC News.
Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.