The Real Reason Why Marvel Didn’t Cast Wesley Snipes For Blade

After years away from the movies, the Blade franchise is finally making a comeback – but it has a new hero playing the character. Why did Marvel choose to go with Mahershala Ali as its new Blade rather than taking Wesley Snipes? While we wait for the character’s Phase 5 MCU return, here’s everything we know. By August of 2019, Wesley Snipes will be 57 years old.

Given, Snipes has grown and aged well and we’re willing to bet the actor who gave us the martial arts moves we saw him in action movies can still throw a vicious kick. Also, age is meaningless and less these days when it comes to the casting of characters in major movies. Harrison Ford was 65 when Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was released, and even though he’s now in his late 70s, he’ll come back to the role again in Indiana Jones 5 so there you go age is just a number. Not to mention the remarkable advances in de-aging tech– something Marvel Studios has used successfully on a number of times to extraordinary results. But there are variations between those examples and the potential of casting Snipes as Blade – the most obvious issue being that Blade’s part vampire. A 77-year-old can play Indiana Jones because of Indy’s human. In the original Blade movie series, it’s showed that Blade ages normally. But in the comics, while Blade isn’t immortal like vampires, he ages slower than humans. The new Blade movies may be closer to the comics in this way. If so, having a 57-year-old half-vampire who looks like he’s 57 well don’t work with modern audiences. Check out the video below to know more on the subject.