{"id":613741,"date":"2026-07-31T16:34:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T16:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/613741\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T16:34:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T16:34:12","slug":"mahershala-ali-blames-marvel-for-blade-falling-apart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/613741\/","title":{"rendered":"Mahershala Ali Blames Marvel for ‘Blade’ Falling Apart"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMahershala Ali won\u2019t be Marvel<\/a>\u2018s Blade<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe two-time Oscar winner confirmed to GQ<\/a> that he won\u2019t star in a long-gestating reboot of the iconic vampire slayer \u2014 and he firmly suggested Marvel dropped the ball.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve been doing this professionally for pushing 30 years now, and one thing I\u2019ve learned is that what is for you is for you and what is not is not,\u201d Ali said in the new interview. \u201cFor whatever reason, that project is not for me. If they wanted to do it, we would\u2019ve done it. So I have to move on \u2026 Again, you had me under contract, they have billions of dollars, if they wanted to do the movie, we would\u2019ve done the movie. So we\u2019re not doing the movie \u2026 But I feel ready to move on from the Blade questions. Those questions are for them. They didn\u2019t want to do it, so they should answer that question.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tAli\u2019s comments were partly in response to being asked about Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige telling the Happy Sad Confused podcast that he was distressed about his company\u2019s inability to get the project going.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI am feeling like a gigantic loser and failure that we didn\u2019t get off the ground with Mahershala,\u201d the executive said. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe move comes on the heels of another Marvel project being scrapped, as Disney+ canceled Wonder Man this week. The freshman series starred Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who received an Emmy nomination for his role. The cancelation shocked fans as Disney had previously announced the show was renewed for a second season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMarvel originally announced a Blade movie starring Ali in 2019. The company brought aboard Bassam Tariq to direct, but he left the film in 2022, reportedly over creative differences, just two months before the project was to begin shooting. Ali and Tariq have now re-teamed for a different project, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.<\/p>\n

\n\tTariq tells GQ that Ali actually trained to play Blade during pre-production.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMahershala is an athlete, and I saw the way he uses a sword on Blade,\u201d the director said. \u201cThe first time he was doing sword practice on Blade, the stuff coming back was incredible.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs a former athlete, I\u2019ve dreamed of doing my own stunts,\u201d Ali added. \u201cI was very excited to do stunts in Blade and trained for a long time for that, so it was a huge relief to get to put that work to use [in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother] \u2026 When I look at this and Blade, I couldn\u2019t have done both, and the reason this even exists is because that project fell apart and Bassam had the time, space, energy, and focus to go and write this and then re-approach me. And I was able to use those skills that I had been working on for over a year training for Blade. In that way, I feel creatively redeemed on some level.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter Bassam left Blade, Lovecraft Country\u00a0helmer Yann Demange took over, and then likewise<\/a> left the project. <\/p>\n

\n\tAli\u2019s Blade did have a voice cameo in a\u00a0post-credits scene<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a02021\u2019s Eternals. Yet in 2024\u2019s Deadpool & Wolverine, Marvel brought back original Blade franchise star Wesley Snipes to reprise the character during an extended cameo sequence. <\/p>\n

\n\tAli previously won best supporting actor Oscars for Moonlight (2016) and Green Book (2018). <\/p>\n

\n\tYour Mother Your Mother Your Mother is an upcoming Amazon MGM Studios action film. The premise: \u201cFollowing the death of his wife, a devoutly religious hitman (Ali) embarks on a desperate journey across Houston to protect his children, confronting the forces closing in around him \u2013 and the beliefs threatening to unravel within.\u201d The film will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mahershala Ali won\u2019t be Marvel\u2018s Blade. The two-time Oscar winner confirmed to GQ that he won\u2019t star in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[74971,18,117,19,17,1889,327],"class_list":["post-613741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-blade","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-marvel","tag-movies"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117015561166535030","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}