BLADE Director Marvel’s Troubled Reboot Had No Script and Couldn’t Escape Wesley Snipes’ Legacy
Marvel Studios spent years trying to get its Blade reboot off the ground, but one problem was baked into the project from the beginning… Wesley Snipes had already made the Daywalker an icon. Oh, there also wasn’t a script.
Former Blade director Bassam Tariq, who exited the Marvel project in September 2022, recently opened up about what went wrong and why he doesn’t think Kevin Feige deserves the beating he’s taken from fans over the troubled production.
According to Tariq, the biggest issue was painfully simple. Marvel was preparing to shoot a massive movie without having the most important ingredient locked down. “We didn’t have a script. That’s what happened.”
That didn’t stop Marvel from spending serious money preparing for production. Elaborate 1920s sets were constructed in Atlanta, including a speakeasy, and the movie was even gearing up for a horse chase.
Production designer Stefania Cella and her crew had created impressive environments for the film, but all that work was sitting there waiting for a story that still hadn’t come together.
Then there was Snipes. The original Blade hit theaters in 1998 and became an important early success for Marvel superheroes on the big screen. Snipes’ performance defined the character for a generation, giving any new version of Blade one hell of an act to follow.
Tariq knew exactly what they were up against. “We also had this impossible task of trying to compete with the first superhero movie, which is Wesley Snipes’s iconic Blade.”
That’s a tough comparison to escape. Snipes brought an attitude, physicality, and screen presence to Blade that helped turn a lesser-known Marvel character into one of the coolest comic book heroes of the era.
Despite the reboot falling apart during his time on the project, Tariq isn’t interested in pinning everything on Feige. He described the Marvel Studios boss as “a good dude” and pushed back against fans who have blamed Feige personally for the movie’s problems.
“I really dislike all this shit about, like, ‘Marvel fumbled this. F**k Kevin Feige,'” Tariq said. “No, man. He’s got a lot on his plate, too much.”
Tariq also understands why Feige had final approval. Before joining Blade, the filmmaker had directed only one feature, Mogul Mowgli, which was made for roughly $1.2 million.
By comparison, Tariq said the set for Blade alone cost about as much as ten Mogul Mowli productions. He wasn’t walking into another scrappy indie movie. This was a huge Marvel production with considerably more money and pressure attached to it.
“So, of course the word should go to Kevin. It makes perfect sense. We just never really had a script.”
For all the complicated factors surrounding Marvel’s failed attempts to make Blade, Tariq keeps coming back to that fundamental problem. The studio could build the sets, spend the money, hire talented filmmakers, and plan huge action sequences, but none of it could compensate for a screenplay that didn’t exsist.