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In January 2005 an insider involved on the film revealed that Snipes made death threats against Goyer, again because of the issue regarding his character being minimized to make way for Reynolds and Biel. A few months later in April, it was reported that Snipes was suing New Line Cinema for failing to pay him his full salary for his role in the film and (given that he was also credited as a producer) failing to allow him to approve the director. Snipes did have a point about his role, though. You have a Blade film where Blade isn’t even in it that much. The film shows no interest in delving further into the character, instead leaving him as a one-dimensional ass-kicking machine.

In November 2012 an interview with Patton Oswalt by A.V. Club (whose screen time in the film as Hedges, a member of the Nightstalkers, amounts to no more than four minutes), had him reveal that Snipes refused to speak to Goyer and even tried to strangle him. “It was a very troubled production,” said Oswalt. “Wesley was just fucking crazy in a hilarious way. He wouldn’t come out of his trailer, and he would smoke weed all day.” He also revealed how Snipes tried to get Goyer to leave the film. “Wesley sat down with David and was like, ‘I think you need to quit. You’re detrimental to this movie.’ And David was like, ‘Why don’t you quit? We’ve got all your close-ups, and we could shoot the rest with your stand-in.’ And that freaked Wesley out so much that, for the rest of the production, he would only communicate with the director through Post-it notes. And he would sign each Post-it note ‘From Blade.’” If this was the ‘Method’ Goyer was referring to then it probably wouldn’t have worked having Blade leave Post-it-notes for other characters.

As a fan of the previous two installments, I viewed Blade: Trinity on its opening day. Following on from what Stephen Norrington and Guillermo del Toro did, I was really looking forward to it. Goyer’s film felt like a major letdown. The title character is sidelined for sidekicks and the main villain is a motiveless Dracula who also barely features during the first half. The thought of Blade squaring off against Dracula sounded awesome, but even their final duel fails to excite.

It was no secret that a Nightstalkers spin-off was planned, but that’s not going to happen. From talking to JoBlo, Biel said of the potential spin-off, “I actually thought that maybe we would do an adaptation of that, but I just don't think that Blade: Trinity did so well. It just didn't do as well as everyone would have hoped, so no one was interested in rethinking those characters.” While there was a short-lived TV series in 2006, it lasted just one season. All signs indicated that the franchise was dead, making it highly unlikely that we’ll see a fourth film.

Snipes’ ego certainly caused problems to the point where some may think twice about working with him again. He is now 50 years old, but had admitted back in 2010 to wanting to play the title role in a fourth Blade film. In an interview with IGN earlier in the year about the upcoming Man of Steel, Goyer was also asked about the possibility of returning to Blade. His response was, “I don’t know. I’ve done so much Blade. At a certain point you’re just like, ‘How many Blade stories can I tell?’ We were scraping the bottom of the barrel even in the first iteration. It was a little hard. Probably not, but you never know.”

Ultimately Goyer’s script for Blade: Trinity made little attempt to top what came before. He really should have gone with his original idea. Unfortunately if he tried to do that storyline now it would suffer comparisons with the similarly themed Daybreakers. Also, with Marvel having now merged with Disney… well… don’t expect a Blade ride at the House of Mouse anytime soon.

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