Blade and Blade II, Marvel’s First Cinematic Successes

Jon Aubrey Divens is an experienced film producer in Beverly Hills who has produced projects through Rocket Media, Inc., since 2010. Over the course of his career in the film industry, Jon A. Divens has helped to produce notable films such as Blade and Blade II.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has dominated the box office for nearly 15 years. While the franchise began as audiences know it today with Iron Man in 2008, a number of Marvel characters had already appeared on the silver screen, including the half-vampiric vampire slayer Blade, portrayed by Wesley Snipes in three films from 1998 to 2004. Preceding Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, the Blade films can be viewed as Marvel’s first successful transition from comic books to the big screen.

Carrying an R rating, the first Blade film grossed more than $131 million in global box office against a $45 million production budget. This success led to the 2002 sequel, Blade II, which improved on its predecessor’s success with a $154.3 million worldwide gross. The production budget was upped to $65 million on the third film in the franchise, Blade: Trinity, but audience interest had waned and the franchise ended in 2004.

That said, it has been announced that Blade will officially return to the MCU in the not too distant future. MCU architect Kevin Feige made the announcement at San Diego Comic Con in 2019. Little is known about the project other than that it will be a part of the Phase 4 production slate for Marvel and that the titular character will be played by two-time Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali, who has already appeared in superhero projects such as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Amazon’s Invincible.