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Denzel Washington said he's to join the modern-day pantheon of heroes as an as-yet-unspecified character in Marvel Studios' Black Panther movie franchise, but as it turns out - he almost did so 30 years before. No, not as Black Panther... as Blade.

David S. Goyer, the writer of all three Blade movies (and director of the third), said once that the studio head in charge of Blade gave Goyer and the film-makers three options for the star of Blade - with different budgets for the movie depending on who they went with.

"[New Line studio head] Mike DeLuca said 'I’ll make it for $40 million if you can get Denzel Washington, 35 if you can get Wesley Snipes, and 20 if you can get Laurence Fishburne.' And that was it," Goyer told Entertainment Weekly. "We wanted Wesley."

When Blade was in in early development, Wesley Snipes was busy at Marvel with another project - an attempted live-action version of Black Panther as a film. It was that project not happening which opened up Snipes' schedule to do Black Panther.

And now, with Snipes' Blade firmly in the MCU, his rival to play Blade is looking to join him in a third Black Panther movie.

Want more? Make sure you've read our list of all the best Marvel Comics stories of all time, and get ready for all the free Marvel comics coming as part of this year's Free Comic Book Day / Comics Giveaway Day events.