It’s been far too long since Blade last hunted on the big screen. Wesley Snipes’ take on the character and the original trilogy will always be fondly remembered (well, maybe not Blade: Trinity) and back when the project was just a rumor, it was theorized that Snipes could somehow appear as the MCU’s version of the hero.
But then, in July 2019 during the Marvel Studios San Diego Comic-Con presentation, they announced a reboot and we learned that Mahershala Ali would be stepping into the vampire-hunting gear and going to town on whatever goes bump in the MCU’s night. Since that moment, however, it’s been radio silence.
We did hear that Jon Watts wrote Blade into a very early draft of Spider-Man: Far From Home, but for now, the new movie has been quietly in development. It seems that things are about to pick up steam, though, as Marvel is looking to start casting some of the other roles and according to sources close to WGTC – the same ones who told us John Cena would be playing Vin Diesel’s brother in F9 – they’re eyeing John Boyega to portray the part of Deacon Frost.
As fans will know, Frost was the villain of the original 1998 Blade, where he was played by Stephen Dorff. In that film, he was a kind of vampire playboy/revolutionary who became frustrated by the traditions that allow vampires to live alongside humans. He saw them merely as food, intending to summon an ancient vampire god that would give him infinite power and control over the human race. It was a pretty good plan, until Blade exploded him.
However, that version was pretty different from the comic book one. On the page, he’s a scientist who accidentally became a vampire, gaining the unique ability to create armies of doppelgängers from the victims he bit. More importantly, he was also directly responsible for Blade’s origins, feeding on his mother as she gave birth and causing him to become a daywalker.
I suspect that the MCU Blade will want to combine both of these in some way. Simply retelling the 1997 movie is unimaginative, but if Deacon Frost is going to be in the film, they’ll definitely take cues from Dorff’s performance. And, in my opinion, Boyega would knock it out of the park.
