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Stephen Dorff Confirms Blade Prequel, But Not Much Progress Yet

by Alex Billington
December 23, 2010
Source: Dark Lord Bunnykins

Last summer, we reported on a rumor that actor Stephen Dorff, next seen in Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, would star in a prequel spin-off to Marvel's Blade that would be about Dorff's vampire villain Deacon Frost. It was set to be a new trilogy created by filmmaker Stephen Norrington, who directed the first Blade movie but has been struggling to get anything into production recently, including The Crow reboot (which he's no longer attached to). Anyway, we've posted updates here and there, but finally have a new quote from Dorff himself. He does shed some light on the new prequel, but it doesn't sound like it's further along than before.

The new quote comes from a blog actually called Dark Lord Bunnykins (via Cinema Blend) which, believe it or not, supposedly got following quote directly from Dorff (most likely doing interviews for Somewhere). I thought the quote was informative and lengthy enough to include the entire text for your reading pleasure.

"Yeah, well, that was something we were talking about. Me and Steve Norrington had a cool treatment for that, and when vampires got all [trendy] again, we thought we should do the adult version, more of like a Scarface Deacon Frost movie. And it sounded cool, this treatment, but then there was [sic] so many legal things. Like, New Line owned Blade and Marvel's got... all this hype into The Avengers and this group movie which sounds like such a mistake. And Blade was such a '90s thing...

"I didn't want to do a Blade movie, I just really wanted to take Deacon and do then do a whole other thing which was much more today. So the idea me and Steve had, we might just end up fictionalizing it and just making a new character which might even be better for us. And he's someone I really like and would love to work with again. So hopefully whenever we get a chance we'll get into that."

Honestly, "whenever we get a chance" doesn't sound very hopeful at all, and considering Norrington hasn't been able to recover his career since dive-bombing it with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in 2003, I don't think his involvement is helping it get off the ground any sooner. Dorff's most interesting comments are about their decision to change the title and character, yet keep the same story but without Marvel, which is actually not a bad idea to get this going, but potentially disastrous too. Additionally, he's definitely not as excited about The Avengers as I am, but I don't think it's a "mistake" like he said. Is Marvel's focus on bigger characters and connecting their universe together hurting the little characters under the Marvel name which deserve a chance to shine as well? That's the question Droff is asking, but I truthfully don't know the answer.

We'll continue to keep an eye out for any more news on this Blade prequel with Dorff and Norrington, but it sounds like we still have to wait at least a few more years. Is anyone actually excited for the prequel?

Filed under Movie News, Opinions, Rumors

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