Blade Scribe Reveals David Fincher's Vision for Original Movie

A little-known fact about 1998's superhero movie Blade movie is that writer David S. Goyer originally developed it with director David Fincher. Fincher is known these days as an award-winning director who, over the course of his 30-year career, has helmed such iconic films as Seven, Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network, and Gone Girl. His upcoming film The Killer, adapting an acclaimed French comic book, looks like another worthwhile entry into that impressive filmography. However, at the time, he'd recently come off of a trying experience directing Alien 3 and didn't have many other credits to his name. While Fincher ultimately dropped out of directing Blade, opening the door for Stephen Norrington, Goyer remembers his approach to pitching his vision for the film and how it stuck with him.

"I developed a draft with Fincher, and it was before he had done Seven," Goyer recalls while speaking to Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. "I think he had done Alien 3, and maybe he was developing Seven. I developed a draft with him… There were surely script things, but what was interesting was, I remember going to our producers office, Peter Frankfurt. There was this giant conference table, and Fincher had laid out 40, 50 books of photography and art that were just open with post-it notes in them, and he just said, 'This is the movie,' and took us on a two-hour tour around the table of this is the aesthetic, this is the vibe for this scene, that scene, this character, that scene, and It was such a fully fleshed out visual pitch. There's not question that some of that thinking -- because I had never seen something like that before -- that a lot of that thinking then infused my further revisions and informed my further revisions. Surely there were plot points as well, but I remember that being fundamental to me."

Blade and the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Blade, starring Wesley Snipes as the titular vampire hunter, came out during a dark time for Marvel. The company was bankrupt, and outsourcing its characters to studios like New Line Cinema (Blade), 20th Century Fox (X-Men, Fantastic Four), and Sony Pictures (Spider-Man) helped keep them afloat. Now, most of those characters are under the Marvel Studios banner, including Blade, with a reboot Blade movie starring Mahershala Ali gestating. While Goyer is a big fan of Mahershala Ali, he sees an irony in the situation.

"It's ironic because, at the time that we made Blade, Marvel was in bankruptcy; X-Men hadn't come out; I think they were trying to develop, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Spider-Man... There was no thought that they would ever develop any of the secondary or tertiary characters," Goyer said. "And I think the purchase price... from Marvel was like $125,000. Nothing. And Marvel was so concerned and wanted it at arm's length once they heard that it was going to be R-rated. They didn't have the logo on the film either – and then it became this massive success and they realized they had this treasure trove of characters that they could exploit. But it's ironic that now they want to bring Blade into the MCU, because they didn't want Blade to have anything to do with the MCU. They were afraid of Blade, and just assumed it would be a black mark on their reputation – no pun intended."

Blade's Cast and Crew

Stephen Norrington directed Blade from Goyer's script. Wesley Snipes starred as Blade, a.k.a. Eric Brooks, a daywalker (half-vampire, or Dhampir) vampire hunter created for Marvel comics by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan in the pages of Tomb of Dracula in 1973. The film also Stephen Dorff as vampiric villain Deacon Frost, Kris Kristofferson as Blade's mentor Whistler, and N'Bushe Wright as Dr. Karen Jenson, a human who suffers a vampire bite and partners with Blade against Frost.

Blade's surprising success (it made $131.2 million worldwide at the box office on a budget of $45 million) led to two sequels, each written by Goyer. Guillermo del Toro directed Blade II. Goyer directed Blade: Trinity, though a tense working relationship with Wesley Snipes made it into what he now describes as the "worst experience of my professional career."

Blade is streaming on Max, along with Blade II and Blade: Trinity. Marvel Studios' Blade movie, starring Mahershala Ali, is scheduled for release on February 14, 2025.