48 Fun Facts About Blade Movies

Who plays Blade in the 1998 film and its two sequels?

Wesley Snipes signed on in 1996 after years of trying to get a Black Panther film made, and his company Amen Ra Films co-produced all three movies.

What nickname do the vampires give Blade?

The Daywalker: Blade walks in sunlight and shrugs off silver and garlic, and his one vampire trait is the thirst for blood, which Whistler's serum keeps in check.

Who directed the first Blade film?

Stephen Norrington, a former special-effects artist whose only previous feature was Death Machine (1994), directed the first film and went on to make The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003).

Which screenwriter wrote all three Blade films?

David S. Goyer wrote all three scripts and directed the third, Blade: Trinity (2004); he went on to co-write Batman Begins and Man of Steel.

Who plays Blade's mentor and weaponsmith Abraham Whistler?

Kris Kristofferson, the country singer-songwriter behind "Me and Bobby McGee", played the grizzled Whistler in all three films, returning in the sequels despite his apparent death in the first.

What is the profession of Karen Jenson, the woman Blade rescues from the hospital?

Hematologist: Karen Jenson is a blood specialist at the hospital where a burned Quinn attacks her, and she later uses her lab skills to hunt for a cure for Blade's thirst.

Which 'blood god' does Frost try to awaken with a ritual using twelve pure-blood vampires?

La Magra, the vampire blood god, is summoned when Frost bleeds twelve pure-bloods; the original ending turned Frost into a swirling mass of blood, but the effect never worked and a climactic duel was shot instead.

What compound does Karen discover explodes when combined with vampire blood?

EDTA, an anticoagulant, reacts explosively with vampire blood in Karen's lab tests; Blade finishes Frost by hurling a handful of EDTA syringes into him, and he swells and bursts.

What is Blade's real name, as revealed in the first film?

Eric Brooks was born in 1967 to Vanessa Brooks, who was bitten by a vampire while in labour; she turns out to have survived as one of Frost's own turned vampires.

Who plays Blade's vampire mother, Vanessa Brooks?

Sanaa Lathan plays Vanessa Brooks, glimpsed in the 1967 prologue and revealed alive among Frost's vampires; Traci Lords plays the vampire Racquel and Arly Jover the fleet-footed Mercury.

What term does the first film use for a human servant loyal to vampires, like the cop Krieger?

Familiar: the film brands these human servants with a vampire glyph tattoo, as with the corrupt cop Krieger; in Blade II the tech Scud is revealed as one working for the vampire overlord.

In which comic was the character Blade created in 1973?

The Tomb of Dracula #10, cover-dated July 1973, introduced Blade as a supporting vampire hunter armed with teakwood knives in Marvel's Dracula series.

What weapon did Goyer give the film Blade in place of the comics character's teakwood knives?

A sword: Goyer swapped the comics' teakwood daggers for a katana with a booby-trapped hilt, giving Blade a samurai-like look that the comics later adopted.

How long was the first cut of Blade, which had a disastrous test screening?

140 minutes: the first cut tested badly, so the ending was reshot as a duel between Blade and Frost, and the film reached cinemas in August 1998, more than a year after principal photography wrapped.

Whose cameo as a cop in the aftermath of the blood club scene was cut from the first film?

Stan Lee filmed a cameo as a police officer who finds Quinn's burning body after the blood-club raid, but the scene was cut from the finished film.

Who plays Nyssa, Damaskinos's daughter, in Blade II?

Leonor Varela, the Chilean actress who had played Cleopatra in the 1999 miniseries, is Nyssa, the pure-blood who ends the film dying in Blade's arms at sunrise.

What was the first Blade film's production budget?

$45 million was the budget; the film grossed about $131 million worldwide, yet Marvel's share, under its old licensing deal, was a flat fee of just $25,000.

Which film did Blade knock off the top of the North American box office in August 1998?

Saving Private Ryan had topped the chart for four straight weekends when Blade opened to about $17 million on 21 August 1998 and took over the number-one spot.

Who composed the score for the first Blade film?

Mark Isham wrote the first film's score; Marco Beltrami took over for Blade II and Ramin Djawadi, later of Game of Thrones, for Blade: Trinity.

Who plays Drake, the original vampire, in Blade: Trinity?

Dominic Purcell, later Lincoln Burrows in Prison Break, plays Drake, the original vampire whom Danica Talos's gang wakes from centuries of sleep; in his true form he is a horned, armoured beast.

Who directed Blade II?

Guillermo del Toro, fresh from The Devil's Backbone (2001), directed Blade II; he went straight on to Hellboy (2004), another comic-book adaptation.

In which city does Blade II open, with Blade searching for the captive Whistler?

Prague: the film opens with Blade scouring the city for the vampires holding Whistler; it was shot at Barrandov and Prague Studios in the Czech Republic, with the city playing itself.

What are the mutant vampires in Blade II called?

Reapers: the mutant strain spread by Nomak feed on vampires and humans alike, shrug off silver and garlic, and are vulnerable only to sunlight and ultraviolet light.

Who is Jared Nomak, patient zero of the mutant strain in Blade II?

Damaskinos's own son: the overlord engineered the strain in a bid to breed vampires free of weaknesses, used Nomak as the first carrier, then cast him off as a failure.

Who plays Nomak in Blade II?

Luke Goss, formerly of the 1980s boy band Bros, plays Nomak under heavy prosthetics and later reunited with the director as Prince Nuada in Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

What is the elite vampire unit, originally trained to kill Blade, that he leads in Blade II?

The Bloodpack, a squad of vampire commandos trained to kill Blade, is handed to him instead to hunt the mutant strain; the filmmakers likened the set-up to The Dirty Dozen.

Which member of Blade's vampire team, played by Ron Perlman, gets an explosive on his skull?

Reinhardt, the team's bullying German, has the charge fixed to the back of his skull; Scud later reveals he swapped it for a dud, and Blade, having swapped it back, uses it to kill Scud.

Who plays Scud, Blade's young technician who turns out to be working for the vampire overlord?

Norman Reedus, later Daryl Dixon in The Walking Dead, plays Scud, the stoner gadget man whose loyalty lies with the vampire overlord; Donnie Yen plays the mute swordsman Snowman.

What does Nyssa discover when she dissects one of the dead mutants?

Their hearts are encased in bone, Nyssa finds in the autopsy, which is why stakes cannot reach them; the creatures also burn through blood so fast that they must feed constantly.

What does Whistler release to lure a horde of the mutants onto the treacherous Chupa?

Reaper pheromones: Whistler sprays Chupa with the scent he has been studying, and the pack tears the vampire apart; Chupa had attacked him in revenge for Priest's mercy killing.

Which Marvel character did Goyer want for Blade II before Marvel held him back for his own franchise?

Morbius, Marvel's living vampire, was Goyer's intended Blade II villain until Marvel held him back for its own plans; in a 1999 comic Morbius's bite gave Blade the film version's immunities.

Roughly how much did Blade II gross worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film of the trilogy?

$155 million: Blade II opened to $32.5 million on 22 March 2002, the biggest debut of the trilogy, and ended with about $82 million domestic and $155 million worldwide.

Which critic called Blade II 'a really rather brilliant vomitorium of viscera'?

Roger Ebert gave Blade II three and a half stars and that line; he had given the first film three stars and later gave Blade: Trinity just one and a half.

Which two actors join Snipes as the vampire hunters Hannibal King and Abigail Whistler in Blade: Trinity?

Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel play the wisecracking Hannibal King and the bow-wielding Abigail Whistler, Whistler's daughter; Reynolds and Snipes shared the screen again two decades later.

What is the name of the vampire-hunting group King and Abigail belong to?

The Nightstalkers, a cell of human vampire hunters, shelter Blade after Whistler's death; their blind scientist Sommerfield develops the anti-vampire virus and her young daughter Zoe survives the Talos raid.

In Blade: Trinity, what does the vampire Danica Talos frame Blade for?

Murdering a human familiar: the vampires lure Blade into killing a human servant on camera, and the footage brings an FBI raid on his hideout in which Whistler dies.

Where do the vampires dig up Drake, the first vampire, at the start of Blade: Trinity?

The Syrian Desert: Danica Talos's crew excavate an ancient buried tomb there and wake Drake, the first vampire, who can walk in sunlight.

What is the name of the viral bioweapon designed to kill vampires at the genetic level in Blade: Trinity?

Daystar, the hunters' engineered virus, needs Drake's pure blood to become lethal to every vampire; Blade delivers it with one of Abigail's arrows at the climax.

Which professional wrestler plays the vampire bodyguard Jarko in Blade: Trinity?

Triple H, WWE's Paul Levesque, plays Jarko Grimwood, Danica Talos's hulking enforcer, who keeps a vampirised pet Pomeranian.

Which constructed language appears on signs and flags in Blade: Trinity's unnamed city?

Esperanto appears on street signs and flags to mark the city as nowhere in particular; Hannibal King is even seen watching Incubus, the 1966 William Shatner film shot in Esperanto.

Who plays Danica Talos, the vampire leader, in Blade: Trinity?

Parker Posey, the indie-film regular from Party Girl and Best in Show, plays Danica Talos, the sneering vampire who wakes Drake and sets the trap for Blade.

Which co-star said Snipes spent much of the Blade: Trinity shoot in his trailer, sending notes?

Patton Oswalt, who plays the hunters' gadget man Hedges, told the story in a 2012 AV Club interview; Snipes denied it and later sued the studio and Goyer over his pay and reduced screen time.

Who replaced Snipes as Blade in the 2006 television series?

Sticky Fingaz, the Onyx rapper born Kirk Jones, took over as Blade for Spike TV's 2006 series, which ran for a single season.

In which 2024 film did Snipes reprise the role of Blade?

Deadpool & Wolverine brought Snipes back as Blade for the first time in twenty years, alongside other Fox-era Marvel characters such as Elektra and Gambit in the Void.

Which studio released Blade in August 1998 and both of its sequels?

New Line Cinema, then owned by Time Warner, released all three films; Blade's 1998 success, two years before X-Men, helped convince Hollywood that Marvel characters could carry films.

Which writer created Blade with artist Gene Colan in 1973?

Marv Wolfman, who later co-created The New Teen Titans for DC, scripted Blade's 1973 debut; he sued Marvel and the film's studio, claiming ownership of the character, and lost.

Who plays Quinn, Frost's enforcer who survives wounds that would kill lesser vampires?

Donal Logue plays Quinn, the loudmouth henchman who is set alight at the blood rave and later loses a hand to Blade; Udo Kier instead played the vampire elder Gitano Dragonetti.

Who plays Karen Jenson, the doctor Blade rescues, in the first film?

N'Bushe Wright, previously seen in Zebrahead (1992) and Fresh (1994), plays Karen Jenson, who is bitten by Quinn and then works on a cure for Blade's thirst.