Wesley Snipes returns as Blade! But will it actually be a sequel?

It has been revealed that Wesley Snipes is set to reprise the role of dhampire vampire slayer Blade. The actor just got out of prison in April 2013 after a two and a half year sentence for tax evasion. He is now set to make $3 million from this upcoming film and a percentage on the back end as well.

Some people are surprised to hear that a new Blade movie would even be considered after the disaster of the last one. The first film was released in 1998, grossed $130 million (before the age of super hero movies, that was a lot for the genre), and was well received. The second one was viewed by many as even better than that first. But Blade Trinity is seen as a mess. There was briefly considered a spin-off called Nightstalkers that would have starred Hannibal King and company, but it didn’t stand a chance. The Blade series was truly staked.

So, what’s all this about a new movie now?

Well, there’s a piece of the puzzle you have to take into consideration. Back in the days of the original Blade trilogy, Marvel itself wasn’t making movies. They were just selling off the film rights to other studios. This is why Sony owns the rights to Spider-man and Fox owns X-Men and Fantastic Four. In the comic these guys crossover with the assorted characters of The Avengers all the time, but on film it can’t happen, at least not without a lot of work between different copyright owners, because the characters’ likeness on screen are all owned by different people. This was true of Blade as well. The Blade movies were made by New Line Cinemas. Well, things have changed in a very interesting way.

The film rights to Daredevil, Elektra, Ghost Rider, Punisher, and Blade have all reverted to Marvel and are now free to be put into the same universe as The Avengers. However, this new ownership makes an actual continuation of the old films very unlikely. As unlikely as anyone would want to make a sequel to Blade Trinity in the first place. Rather like how 2008’s The Incredible Hulk is not a sequel to 2003’s Hulk. The 2003 Hulk was pre-Avengers cinematic universe just like the Blade movies.

Now we enter into the realm of speculation and it leads me to this conclusion: we are going to see a brand new Blade continuity that ignores the prior films and takes place in the same universe as The Avengers. It is already well known that a Dr. Strange movie is on the way. It looks to me like Disney just got it’s hands on the two missing pieces to the supernatural team The Midnight Sons from the 90’s which included Dr. Strange, Blade, and Ghost Rider. The pieces are now in their hands. And Marvel has shown they aren’t afraid to give some attention to lesser known teams. They just gave a movie to Guardians of the Galaxy and it’s confirmed there are going to be Daredevil, Power Fist & Luke Cage, and Jessica Jones TV series on Netflix that culminate in a mini series for The Defenders (AKA the C stringers who The Avengers laugh at).

The final piece of the puzzle? If it’s not a continuation of the old Blade trilogy, why use Wesley Snipes? Simple answer: why the hell not? He’s proven to be good at it! And I think Kirk Jones playing the character in the short lived TV series made them a little leery of experimenting with someone new. Can you blame them? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

So what do you think? Think I’m right? Do you think we’re about to see Blade cutting down vampires while Iron Man battles robots one city block over? Only time will tell!

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