Mahershala Ali won’t be Marvel‘s Blade.
The two-time Oscar winner confirmed to GQ that he won’t star in a long-gestating reboot of the iconic vampire slayer — and he firmly suggested Marvel dropped the ball.
“I’ve been doing this professionally for pushing 30 years now, and one thing I’ve learned is that what is for you is for you and what is not is not,” Ali said in the new interview. “For whatever reason, that project is not for me. If they wanted to do it, we would’ve done it. So I have to move on … 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 … But I feel ready to move on from the Blade questions. Those questions are for them. They didn’t want to do it, so they should answer that question.”
Ali’s 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’s inability to get the project going.
“I am feeling like a gigantic loser and failure that we didn’t get off the ground with Mahershala,” the executive said.
The 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.
Marvel originally announced a Blade movie starring Ali at San Diego Comic-Con 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.
Tariq tells GQ that Ali actually trained to play Blade during pre-production.
“Mahershala is an athlete, and I saw the way he uses a sword on Blade,” the director said. “The first time he was doing sword practice on Blade, the stuff coming back was incredible.”
“As a former athlete, I’ve dreamed of doing my own stunts,” Ali added. “I 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] … When I look at this and Blade, I couldn’t 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.”
After Bassam left Blade, Lovecraft Country helmer Yann Demange took over, and then likewise left the project.
Ali’s Blade did have a voice cameo in a post-credits scene for 2021’s Eternals. Yet in 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine, Marvel brought back original Blade franchise star Wesley Snipes to reprise the character during an extended cameo sequence.
Ali previously won best supporting actor Oscars for Moonlight (2016) and Green Book (2018).
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is an upcoming Amazon MGM Studios action film. The premise: “Following 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 – and the beliefs threatening to unravel within.” The film will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
