Back at the San Diego Comic Con in 2019, Marvel Studios announced a number of projects during its Hall H presentation, including a reboot of the iconic Vampire hunter, “Blade”, with Mahershala Ali set to play the daywalker.

Over the years, the film has gone through lots of changes, with two different directors attached, Bassam Tariq and Yann Demange, and multiple people being brought aboard to write scripts for the film, including Stacy Osei-Kuffour, Beau DeMayo, Ben Sokolowski, Michael Starrbury, Nic Pizzolatto, Michael Green, and Eric Pearson.

Marvel even brought in Mahershala Ali for a voice cameo of Blade in the “Eternals” film in 2021, but sadly that doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere, since we’ve also not heard any more details on when the “Eternals” might pop up again in the MCU. The character also appeared in the “Marvel Zombies” animated series for Disney+, but for “Deadpool & Wolverine”, Wesley Snipes returned to play the vampire hunter and even had some gags during the film at the expense of Marvel over all these delays.

The project has been in development since 2020, and while at one point it came close to filming, it continued to get delayed due to the pandemic and writers’ strikes. But now Mahershala Ali has confirmed in an interview with GQ that he’s done with the project.

“If they wanted to do it, we would’ve done it,”

He added:

“I didn’t feel great about the fact that things finished the way that they did [with Blade]; I like seeing things through. I was really attracted to the challenge of playing a character that felt so stretched, but also the intimacy of his situation and the potential care he would take in executing his mission. All TV and films are hard, and I just want it to be difficult for the right reasons, and it felt like this was going to be that. I’m so grateful that we were able to see this through and find what I believe is the right thing together.”

With him once again confirming the news:

“I’m good. Again, 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.”

Even Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has recently spoken openly about his regret and embarrassment over the film being announced and never making it to our screens.

Roger’s Take: Being honest, I always thought it was going to be interesting to see how Mahershala Ali would take on the role, as he was already in his late 40’s when it was announced and now being in his early 50’s, Marvel needs someone much younger to take on the role, if they plan on keeping them around for a decade or two.

Personally, I’m glad there is some closure on the project, so fans can accept that its not happening and perhaps at some point in the future, a new “Blade” will hit our screens, though no doubt Marvel will want to make sure the script is sorted before it’s publicly announced, to avoid more embarrassment.

“Blade” seemed to hit every bump on the way through development, and during that time, Marvel Studios exploded with new content on Disney+, resulting in a drop in quality and thus viewership dropped, causing Marvel to drastically scale back its projects.

There’s little doubt that what happened with “Blade”, along with many of the other projects announced during the Disney+ boom era, has resulted in Marvel being much more picky about announcing projects, waiting until they are actually happening before standing in front of a crowded room telling audiences they are making it.

What do you think about “Blade” being cancelled? Let me know on social media!