Wesley Snipes & Ryan Reynolds – Source: Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty
After 20 years, Wesley Snipes has returned as Blade for Marvel’s Deadpool & Wolverine and he’s just as shocked about the cameo as you are.
Fans have been dying for an update on the Marvel Studios’ Blade reboot since the July 2019 announcement that Mahershala Ali would portray the Daywalker. Since 2019 the reboot has hired and fired several directors and the movie remains currently up in the air.
This weekend however Deadpool and Wolverine watchers were shocked to see Wesley Snipes reprise his role as Blade in the film, a call back to Ryan Reynolds co-starring alongside Snipes in 2004’s Blade: Trinity.
Despite online chatter of a multi-decade feud between Ryan Reynolds and Snipes, they pulled it off without the appearance leaking online.
According to Entertainment Weekly Snipes wasn’t sure it would work since the MCU reboot was already announced and because it never previously materialized.
“Over the years, we’ve had very interesting conversations, some of them very substantive and some of them not,” Snipes told EW. “So I kind of resided that I was moving on from them, which is okay. I did three of them, and I thought they turned out pretty good. Not so bad… So we move on to other things, and bigger and better things, as well.”
Snipes went on to reveal that he received a random text from Ryan Reynolds that said, “I want to talk to you” and the rest is history.
“I did not think it was possible,” he said of his return after 20 years. “I didn’t think we would be able to pull it off. I didn’t think that Marvel was into it, Disney was into it — also because they had Mahershala [Ali] cast for the next upcoming version of it…I thought it didn’t make sense to me, but [when] you get a call from Ryan Reynolds out of the blue after 20 years, you go, ‘Okay, I got to take this call. Let’s see what this is about.’ He told me the idea…They said ‘yes’ and ‘it’s a go.’ ‘If you’re in, we’re in.’ Here we are.”
During San Diego Comic-Con, Wesley Snipes proudly walked the stage during Marvel’s panels with Ryan Reynolds calling him a “dear friend”, a touching moment considering that before Robert Downey dawned the Ironman suit, Wesley Snipes kept the Marvel doors open for business.
With RDJ back as Dr. Doom and Wesley Snipes’ Blade officially canon in another universe, every age group of Marvel fans can rejoice.