{"id":901765,"date":"2026-09-22T21:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T21:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/901765\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T21:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T21:58:10","slug":"mahershala-ali-blade-is-the-biggest-failure-of-kevin-feiges-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/901765\/","title":{"rendered":"Mahershala Ali: ‘Blade’ Is the Biggest Failure of Kevin Feige’s Career"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMahershala Ali<\/a> is dumbfounded like the rest of us when it comes to Marvel\u2019s inability to get his \u201cBlade<\/a>\u201d movie reboot off the ground. Marvel Studios<\/a> president Kevin Feige<\/a> told the \u201cHappy Sad Confused\u201d podcast over the summer that he was \u201cfeeling like a gigantic loser and failure\u201d for bungling Ali\u2019s \u201cBlade,\u201d and now the actor told GQ that he agrees with that assessment.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat\u2019s a Kevin Feige question,\u201d Ali said when asked why Marvel never got to the point of putting \u201cBlade\u201d into production. \u201cThey had, as you said, a two-time Oscar-winning actor under contract and you got billions of dollars. That\u2019s a question for them. I don\u2019t mean anything personal to you, but I don\u2019t know why it didn\u2019t. To this day, I don\u2019t know why it didn\u2019t happen. I just know that it was\u2014Kevin, he said it was the biggest failure of his career and I agree.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMarvel originally announced \u201cBlade\u201d in July 2019. Bassam Tariq (who now directs Ali in \u201cYour Mother Your Mother Your Mother\u201d) 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<\/a> that \u201cBlade\u201d had gone through at least five writers, from \u201cWatchmen\u201d scribe Stacy Osei-Kuffour to Michael Starrbury. Yann Demange stepped in as the movie\u2019s director after Tariq\u2019s exit, but Demange ended up dropping out<\/a> in June 2024.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmid the film\u2019s development struggles, Ali\u2019s interest in playing Blade has never wavered. He told Variety <\/a>on the \u201cJurassic World Rebirth\u201d red carpet last summer: \u201cI\u2019m ready. Let them know I\u2019m ready.\u201d In an interview with GQ<\/a> earlier this year, Ali called out Marvel point blank by saying: \u201cYou 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to press in July 2025, Feige explained how the prolonged delays<\/a> on \u201cBlade\u201d were a symptom of Marvel\u2019s \u201cover-expansion\u201d into Disney+ streaming content where \u201cfor the very first time ever, quantity trumped quality.\u201d When Marvel began to reevaluate its development process, the \u201cBlade\u201d movie was one of the projects that stalled.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBlade\u201d was the latest example of Ali\u2019s career never being sure-footed despite being a two-time Oscar-winning actor for \u201cMoonlight\u201d and \u201cGreen Book.\u201d The actor told GQ in his latest interview that he thought his career would break through after the Oscar wins, yet he still found himself fighting to be cast in HBO\u2019s \u201cTrue Detective\u201d Season 3 as opposed to getting any offers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t feel any bitterness or disappointment around that. I want to be careful of it coming off that way because it\u2019s honestly not how I feel,\u201d Ali explained. \u201cIf anything, there\u2019s sort of a relief in the epiphany of like, \u2018Oh, ain\u2019t nobody coming to save you. You got to build your boat. They\u2019re not coming. There\u2019s no helicopter coming. Get to cutting wood.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAli also said in the interiew, \u201cI don\u2019t know why I constantly feel like I have to remind people of stuff or prove myself to people, but that\u2019s just how this business works. And it exhausts me. And so then you start thinking about: How long do I have to do this this way, or do it at all?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWatch Ali\u2019s full interview with GQ in the video below.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mahershala Ali is dumbfounded like the rest of us when it comes to Marvel\u2019s inability to get his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":901766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,11497,134,11203,408229,11204,344],"class_list":["post-901765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-blade","tag-entertainment","tag-kevin-feige","tag-mahershala-ali","tag-marvel-studios","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/901766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}