It would be fair to say that Wesley Snipes has suffered from his fair share of ups and downs during a career in the industry that’s spanned almost four decades, but for a lot of people, the defining role of his will always be comic book vampire hunter Blade.
Snipes reigned as one of the biggest action stars in the business throughout the 1990s, but after the massively disappointing Blade: Trinity drew his tenure as the Daywalker to a close, his fortunes began to nosedive. The lifelong martial arts practitioner was content to churn out a relentless string of mediocre straight to video actioners, starring in nine such vehicles in the space of five years, before spending two and a half years in prison for tax evasion.
Ironically, since his release, Snipes has seen more of his movies score a theatrical debut than at any point over the previous decade, although his Eddie Murphy collaborations Dolemite Is My Name and the upcoming Coming 2 America are streaming exclusives.
Of course, ever since it was first announced that Marvel Studios were rebooting Blade, the 58 year-old has constantly been linked with a cameo appearance. However, in a recent interview Snipes admitted that he’s not currently involved or attached in any capacity, but he is working on something that he believes will blow it out of the water.
“I don’t have any involvement, but I support the young artists and I support Marvel in their business decisions. It’s a beautiful thing. I think he’s a heck of a job. He’s got a heck of a job on his hands. We have two things. We have one which is a female action franchise. And also what we call our Blade-killer, our Blade on steroids. And we set our character in the world of shape-shifters and a little bit of time travel. But the action is going to be, well, we did white belt action in Blade. Now we’re going to do black belt action.
It’s wonderful what we did, but, brother, we’re so much better than we were then. So much better now than we were then. Yes, indeed. And we’ve got more tools. Some of the things that were innovated in the Blade franchise in the first film are now standard in the Marvel universe and all of these other action movies. And the technology allows them to do a lot of things we couldn’t do then. Now give us the technology, and we’ve already got the skills and the flavor. It’s popping, baby!”
Snipes will once again return to streaming when he tackles a rare dramatic role opposite Kevin Hart in Netflix’s semi-biographical miniseries True Story, but the movie he’s describing as “Blade on steroids” will no doubt be looking to make a big splash on VOD whenever it eventually gets through the production process and is ready for release.
