Original Blade Villain Stephen Dorff Thinks MCU's Blade Is Going To Suck: "We Already Did It And Made It The Best"

Stephen Dorff has better things to do than to make a movie with Marvel Studios. Or even to watch one produced by them.

Dorff is no stranger to the world of comic book movies. He played Deacon Frost, the villain to Wesley Snipes’ vampire slayer in 1998’s Blade.

Speaking to The Daily Beast, Dorff said he doesn’t rule out making comic book films entirely as long as they “were more like when I started out when we made Blade, or the few that have been decent over the years, like when [Christopher] Nolan did The Dark Knight and reinvented Batman from Tim Burton.”

“All this other garbage is just embarrassing,” you know what I mean?” Dorff, 49, said. “I mean, God bless them, they’re making a bunch of money, but their movies suck [laughs]. And nobody’s going to remember them. Nobody’s remembering Black Adam at the end of the day. I didn’t even see that movie, it looked so bad.” (Ed: Black Adam is a DC movie, but, yes, it’s baaaad.)

Dorff also couldn’t resist taking a swipe at MCU’s Blade, with Mahershala Ali — Dorff's True Detective co-star — in the title role. “How’s that PG Blade movie going for you, that can’t get a director? [laughs],” he said. “Because anybody who goes there is going to be laughed at by everyone because we already did it and made it the best. There’s no Steve Norrington out there.”

The production of MCU’s Blade hasn’t been smooth sailing. Original director Bassam Tariq jumped ship two months before production was slated to start. The baton is handed over to Yann Demange. The helmsman change forced Marvel Studios to push back Blade’s release from November 2023 to September 2024. Ali’s Blade, however, did make his MCU debut in a voice cameo in the end-credits stinger of Eternals.

Norrington, a British filmmaker who cut his teeth with special visual effects, directed the original R-rated Blade. Norrington, now 59, is said to have retired from filmmaking; his last feature was 2003’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

This isn’t the first time Dorff has badmouthed Marvel. In a 2021 interview with The Independent, he famously likened Black Widow to “a bad video game” and that he was “embarrassed” for its star, Scarlett Johansson.

“I’m sure she got paid five, seven million bucks, but I’m embarrassed for her,” he said then. “I don’t want to be in those movies. I really don’t. I’ll find that kid director that’s gonna be the next ]Stanley] Kubrick and I’ll act for him instead.”

Dorff’s latest, Divinity, a sci-fi thriller, had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan 21.

Photos: TPG News/Click Photos

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