Not even Kevin Feige could get Marvel’s Blade out of Wesley Snipes’ shadow

You don’t need to look far to see why Marvel’s Blade reboot crumbled almost before it got started—just ask one of the people who tried to steer it: Bassam Tariq. He was the fellow originally tapped to direct, before quietly dropping out in September 2022. Now he’s shed a bit of light on what really went wrong, and—surprise, surprise—it’s less about vampires, and more about the spectre of Wesley Snipes and Marvel never actually finishing a script.

The Script That Wasn’t There

If you’re picturing chaos on set, you’re not far off. According to Tariq, everyone was waiting around looking for direction—literally. Massive period sets, all 1920s jazz: speakeasy, horses, the lot, built by production designer Stefania Cella and her team. All very impressive. The catch? No one had written the actual story to make use of it all.

As Tariq told Vulture about the stalled production: "We didn’t have a script. That’s what happened."

If that sounds a bit surreal for a blockbuster, you’re not wrong. The sets, by the way, reportedly cost about as much as ten of Tariq’s first feature (Mogul Mowgli, a £1.2 million indie)—so you can see just how out-of-control the scale got without a page to film.

The Weight of Wesley Snipes

Of course, hovering over the whole thing was one unavoidable truth: nobody could get out from under the shadow of Wesley Snipes’ full-leather, sunglasses-at-night turn as Blade in 1998. Tariq’s frank: what Marvel tried to do was, in his words, pretty much a doomed mission from the get-go.

Talking about the comparisons, Tariq put it bluntly: "We also had this impossible task of trying to compete with the first superhero movie, which is Wesley Snipes's iconic Blade."

Put another way, Marvel might have the cash and the CGI, but that very specific cultural lightning Snipes bottled was always going to be hard—if not impossible—to catch twice.

Don’t Blame Feige (This Time, At Least)

If you’re gearing up into a rant about Marvel honcho Kevin Feige and his supposed grip on the creative tiller, not so fast. Tariq is clear on this point: it’s not just about one bloke pulling strings. According to him, Feige’s got his hands full with a frankly absurd number of projects, and trying to lay all the blame at his door is missing the point. For all the fan fury and internet noise, Tariq reckons Feige’s not the villain here—he’s just someone trying (and maybe failing) to keep too many balls in the air at once.

With the dust settled and Marvel’s Blade project still sitting very much in "maybe, someday" limbo, Tariq’s experience stands as the latest in a long line of proof: even the world’s mightiest studio can’t always outpace an unfinished script—or a performance that’s become legend.