Mahershala Ali is dumbfounded like the rest of us when it comes to Marvel’s inability to get his “Blade” movie reboot off the ground. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige told the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast over the summer that he was “feeling like a gigantic loser and failure” for bungling Ali’s “Blade,” and now the actor told GQ that he agrees with that assessment. That’s a question for them.
I don’t mean anything personal to you, but I don’t know why it didn’t. To this day, I don’t know why it didn’t happen. I just know that it was—Kevin, he said it was the biggest failure of his career and I agree.” Marvel originally announced “Blade” in July 2019.
Bassam Tariq (who now directs Ali in “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother”) was the first director to join the movie, but he exited in September 2022 roughly two months before it was set to begin shooting. Variety reported in November 2023 that “Blade” had gone through at least five writers, from “Watchmen” scribe Stacy Osei-Kuffour to Michael Starrbury. Yann Demange stepped in as the movie’s director after Tariq’s exit, but Demange ended up dropping out in June 2024.
Amid the film’s development struggles, Ali’s interest in playing Blade has never wavered. He told Variety on the “Jurassic World Rebirth” red carpet last summer: “I’m ready. Let them know I’m ready.” In an interview with GQ earlier this year, Ali called out Marvel point blank by saying: “You had me under contract, they have billions of dollars, if they wanted to do the movie, we would’ve done the movie.
So we’re not doing the movie.” Speaking to press in July 2025, Feige explained how the prolonged delays on “Blade” were a symptom of Marvel’s “over-expansion” into Disney+ streaming content where “for the very first time ever, quantity trumped quality.” When Marvel began to reevaluate its development process, the “Blade” movie was one of the projects that stalled. I want to be careful of it coming off that way because it’s honestly not how I feel,” Ali explained. You got to build your boat.
There’s no helicopter coming. Get to cutting wood.'” Ali also said in the interiew, “I don’t know why I constantly feel like I have to remind people of stuff or prove myself to people, but that’s just how this business works. And so then you start thinking about: How long do I have to do this this way, or do it at all?” Watch Ali’s full interview with GQ in the video below.
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