Blade

Wesley Snipes and the cast look back at the modern cult classic.

- Leah Greenblatt

 

TWO DECADES BEFORE BLACK PANTHER, THE FIRST BLACK CINEMATIC SUPERHERO STORMED SCREENS IN 1998’S WILD VAMPIRE-HUNTER EPIC BLADE. IN HONOR OF ITS 20TH ANNIVERSARY, WESLEY SNIPES, STEPHEN DORFF, AND OTHERS BREAK DOWN THE BLOOD, THE KUNG FU, AND THE REINVENTION OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE AS WE KNOW IT.

THE BEGINNING

PETER FRANKFURT (PRODUCER) This is what you need to know: Basically, Blade is a three- legged stool. [David S.] Goyer wrote the script, Wesley was Blade and also a producer. And Stephen Norrington, the director, he was really the guy, the auteur.

WESLEY SNIPES (BLADE/PRODUCER) It was kind of serendipitous, you know? We were talking about doing Black Panther, but that didn’t come to be, and we never lost the appetite to play in that world. So Blade seemed like a pretty good replacement.

Fairly good, I mean—I don’t know if you can take vampires and replace Wakanda. But at the time, it was a cool thing. [Laughs]

DAVID S. GOYER (SCREENWRITER) I’d been kicking around doing Van Damme movies, that kind of stuff, and I had heard that New Line wanted to make a lower-budget black superhero film. At that time Marvel was in bankruptcy, and they’d already sold the rights to X-Men and Spider-Man and a few other things, and I knew they were thinking about Luke Cage and Black Panther.

FRANKFURT The idea was we would come up with a script for an under–$10 million movie that would be tough and street like Juice—kind of a hip-hop Marvel movie.

GOYER I suggested Blade as a trilogy. I remember I came in [to New Line] and said, “I’m going to pitch you the Star Wars of black vampire films.”