Whether it’s Captain America: Civil War or the imminent Spider-Man: Homecoming, each new addition to the MCUÂ sets in motion a huge press tour involving key creative players and Kevin Feige.
As president of Marvel Studios and one of the architects that helped engineer the MCU into a global phenomenon, Feige often spends much of those junkets soliciting questions relating to potential spinoffs and, in the case of Homecoming, its ties to Ruben Fleischer’s Venom movie – or lack thereof. But three recurring topics that are consistently presented to Kevin Feige every five-to-six months are as follows: the possibility of an R-rated Marvel movie, a crossover with the studio’s TV universe and, perhaps most tantalizing of all, Blade‘s future in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Like clockwork, Feige often addresses one (or indeed all) of those questions at least once a year, and it’s often enough to keep hopes alive – particularly in the case of Blade, given Eric Brooks hasn’t been seen on the silver screen since the release of Trinity in 2004.
Indeed, last we reported, Kevin Feige went on record to say that there’s “nothing imminent” on the Blade front and now, in a new interview with JoBlo, the Marvel boss admitted that the song remains the same. He’s a “legacy character,” essentially, but that doesn’t mean we won’t see him again on the big screen.
We think it would be cool. Someday. My tenure at Marvel started 17 years ago, and there were two things that sort of launched the modern era. One was X-Men, which was the first thing that people said, ‘Oh, there’s life here.’ But a few years before that, there was Blade. A character nobody had heard of at all, had only appeared in a few issues of Tomb of Dracula or something, turned into a big franchise.
That was always a great lesson for me, where you go, ‘It doesn’t matter how well known the character is, it matters how cool the movie is.’ Which, many years later, would be the reason we do Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange. I think Blade is a legacy character now, and I think it would be fun to do something with him one day.
So, there you have it; Blade is still collecting dust on the shelf, and will likely continue to do so for a little while longer. But what are your hopes for the future of the IP? Surely Blade would be the perfect vehicle for Marvel’s first R-rated superhero movie, no?
