It’s no secret that Marvel Studios has had trouble getting its “Blade” reboot off the ground. Back in 2019, Mahershala Ali was announced as the new DayWalker, taking over the role from Wesley Snipes. Since then, the project has undergone multiple creative issues, including several director, script and cast changes.
Despite all the upheaval around the new “Blade” movie, the OG DayWalker is experiencing a triumphant resurgence thanks to Snipes’ surprise appearance in the blockbuster “Deadpool & Wolverine.” When Wade Wilson/Deadpool and Logan/Wolverine are trapped in The Void—a place where forgotten characters are sent—the vampire hunter is among the heroes who help them escape back to Wade’s universe.
Before the film’s release, there were a lot of rumors about what characters we could see return. Due to all the controversy surrounding the new film, Blade was a character a lot of fans thought would be off limits. When Snipes walked into the scene audiences went wild, something star/producer/co-writer Ryan Reynolds noted Wednesday on Instagram.
“The reaction when @realwesleysnipes enters the movie is the most intense thing l’ve heard in a theater. People screaming with uninhibited joy and love is also the sound of a legacy,” he wrote. “More Blade please. #DayWalker A ‘Logan’-style send off, specifically.”
Originally released in 1998, “Blade” is widely considered to be the film that kicked off the modern comic book movie boom. “X-Men” hit theaters two years later in 2000 and was followed by “Spider-Man” starring Tobey Maguire in 2002. The “Blade” franchise has a worldwide gross of $418 million, with the third one, “Blade: Trinity,” co-starring Reynolds. Snipes’ appearance in “Deadpool & Wolverine” is a real full circle moment.
Following “Deadpool & Wolverine’s” big screening and panel at San Diego Comic-Con in July, Snipes told Entertainment Weekly that even though he’d had “interesting conversations” over the years about reprising the role, he thought it wouldn’t happen and had moved on until Reynolds sent him a text reading, “I want to talk to you.”
“I did not think it was possible. I didn’t think we would be able to pull it off. I didn’t think that Marvel was into it, Disney was into it — also because they had Mahershala cast for the next upcoming version of it,” Snipes said. “I thought it didn’t make sense to me, but [when] you get a call from Ryan Reynolds out of the blue after 20 years, you go, ‘Okay, I got to take this call. Let’s see what this is about. He told me the idea…They said ‘yes’ and ‘it’s a go.’ ‘If you’re in, we’re in.’ Here we are.”
With fans buzzing about the return of the OG DayWalker, the film giving his character a happy ending and Marvel’s issues developing its new film, this seems like the perfect time to follow Ryan’s advice and give fans “More Blade.” Don’t get us wrong, we definitely want to see Mahershala’s version of the vampire hunter, but it seems like there could be room for both variants of the character to coexist.