Here's the brief excerpt from the interview on ComicBookMovie....
Marvel: Were there any fighters that didn't make the cut in "Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3" that you wish had?
Todd Jefferson: Of course! Characters like Blade and Black Panther were on the list in the early stages of the game's design. When we got into the mechanics of the characters many dropped off for one reason or another.
For Blade, his abilities were almost identical to Deadpool's, and Pool's characterization, teleportation and ability to break the fourth wall won out.
Black Panther -- a favorite of mine ever since "Secret Invasion" -- was ruled out because characters like Taskmaster already duplicated a lot of what Black Panther would do on screen. Building the right character roster is tricky work, but in the end, I feel that we put together a broad spectrum of old and new characters for both versions of the game.
Who really makes the choices when it comes to characters that will be featured in the game? Do you guys have a process that goes, "Nah, we can't have this one," or, "Hey, players would love this one!"
The choice of who makes it into the game is a shared decision between Capcom and Marvel. The list of "Who do we want in the game?" starts off pretty big -- monstrous, even -- and gets culled down based on a number of different factors. We may want a character that aligns perfectly with the game's mechanics, like Taskmaster or She Hulk, in which case he or she definitely makes the roster. Conversely, there were characters like Dr. Octopus that both sides wanted and in the end proved to not be feasible from a technical standpoint.
0SageMode0: I really would've like to see Panther and Blade in the game, even moreso than Taskmaster whom BP was dropped for. But maybe We'll get to see them in a future installment, as I'm sure Capcom will be making more of.