Wesley Snipes had a career-defining moment when he brought Marvel's Blade to the big screen, so much so that he still speaks of wanting to make another movie in the film series. Before he played in the Vampire film, he tells The Hollywood Reporter he wanted to play the leader of Wakanda back in the 90s.

After starring in hit action films and showcasing his versatility with comedy, Snipes no longer had to wait to be offered roles, he was able to pitch his ideas to studios, and one of them was to star as T'Challa and make a Black Panther movie.

He says, “Black Panther is an iconic character who much of the world was unfamiliar with, and the communities that I grew up in would love." He continued to equate the potential success with that of other Black movies, “Look, from the days of William Marshall playing Blacula in the 1970s black flicks and the fervor you found inside the black and Hispanic communities, it never crossed my mind that the audience wouldn’t be down with it.”

Unfortunately, many studios thought Snipes wanted to make a movie about the Black Panther Party. But he ultimately wanted to showcase the regalness of Africa - something that's not depicted in mainstream media very often.

“I think Black Panther spoke to me because he was noble, and he was the antithesis of the stereotypes presented and portrayed about Africans, African history and the great kingdoms of Africa,” Snipes states. “It had cultural significance, social significance. It was something that the black community and the white community hadn’t seen before.”

Snipes noted that type of representation of the continent was something many had not seen before, black or white. But Snipes' idea as forward-thinking as it was fell short as Marvel was undergoing financial hardship at the time. He would move on to play Blade in 1998. He explained the change of course saying, “They both [Black Panther and Blade] had nobility. They both were fighters. So I thought, hey, we can’t do the King of Wakanda and the Vibranium and the hidden kingdom in Africa, let’s do a black vampire.”

Black Panther is now debuting as a standalone film some 20 years later on February 16. As Chad Bosewick plays the lead, Snipes was right in predicting the height of the enthusiasm for the movie, as it currently has outperformed many Marvel movies in advanced ticketing alone.

Source: Hollywood Reporter