Director James Wan is doing press for Aquaman and is now talking about a previous comic book project he almost made, a Blade reboot for Marvel Studios. He revealed to the SadHappyConfused podcast (via ScreenRant) that around 2013 after he made The Conjuring he approached Marvel Studios about their Blade reboot.
“Years back, a couple of years back, I think it was right after Conjuring 1 that I went into a particular studio and told them ‘Hey, I’m a big fan of Blade. Would you guys be interested in rebooting Blade?’ So that was one. Obviously, nothing came out of that! But that was my first intro into looking at potential comic book properties.”
“It was just to kind of talk about it. I didn’t have a full presentation. I did have an idea, I can’t quite remember what it was. That’s how far back it was and I’ve done a lot since then so I can’t quite remember what I had thought of. But I did like it at the time.”
Around this same time, TheHollywoodReporter mentioned that Marvel Studios had a script in development from their in-house writer’s program for Blade alongside Black Panther, Doctor Strange, and Ms. Marvel (aka Captain Marvel) movies. The Blade film rights had recently reverted back to them from New Line Cinema.
Marvel has a writing program it uses as a concept generator and has scripts for Blade and Ms. Marvel features, for example. Doctor Strange, Iron Fist, Black Panther and The Runaways are other projects on the horizon. The company slowly has been reacquiring licenses to characters it lost during the 1990s, snapping up Blade, Ghost Rider, Power Man, and Daredevil in the past year alone.
Marvel considering a horror director like James Wan seemed like they were hoping to land the next Guillmero del Toro, who certainly made a fantastic sequel with Blade II that added to the lore. For whatever reason it didn’t work out and the studio has been sitting on the project since.
Kevin Feige has sounded a little more warm to the idea of resurrecting Blade in more recent interviews calling him a “legacy” character but nothing official has been announced concerning the future of the Day Walker in the MCU.
Interesting side note, Blade director Stephen Norrington had been planning to follow up Blade with a Shang-Chi movie. Wonder Woman 1984 screenwriter Dave Callaham is reportedly writing a Shang-Chi script for Marvel Studios, which see him become their first leading Asian superhero.
SOURCE: SAD HAPPY CONFUSED
