The Marvel Cinematic Universe has never been known for intimate, character-driven dramas, and the franchise has yet to deliver a project with a budget of less than $100 million. In fact, even when Marvel Studios went ahead and brought us an intimate, character-driven drama in WandaVision, it was reportedly the most expensive TV show ever made with costs said to be as high as $25 million per episode.
Small scale is not synonymous with the MCU, then, and while DC Films might be content to develop and green light smaller standalone projects like Joker, Kevin Feige is pretty much set in his ways at this point. The long-running superhero series has the creative leeway and the almost guaranteed box office clout to do whatever it wants, and what it wants to do is create broad, crowd-pleasing, effects-driven, action-packed blockbusters, which is far from a bad thing.
That being said, insider Daniel Richtman is claiming that the Blade reboot will be smaller than the studio’s typical output, although there are no additional details available, meaning that the tipster’s statement is entirely open to interpretation. It could be the budget – but history has shown that we’re still talking nine figures – or it could be the scale, with Mahershala Ali’s Daywalker potentially tackling a much more contained threat than the blue sky beams and world-ending dangers that typically plague the MCU’s roster of heroes.
Wesley Snipes’ entire trilogy cost a combined total of $164 million, and the reboot may conceivably set Marvel back more than that on its own. Either way, the costliest film in history to star a vampire in the title role is $70 million box office dud Dracula Untold, so we can at least guarantee that Blade will take that particular crown regardless of how much smaller than the MCU’s standard output it ends up being.
