{"id":535433,"date":"2026-07-20T16:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T16:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/535433\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T16:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T16:58:09","slug":"kevin-feige-says-blade-reboot-failure-has-him-feeling-like-a-loser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/535433\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Feige Says ‘Blade’ Reboot Failure Has Him Feeling Like a Loser"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMarvel Studios<\/a> president Kevin Feige<\/a> is expressing disappointment over the failed \u201cBlade<\/a>\u201d reboot that was supposed to star Mahershala Ali<\/a> as the legendary vampire slayer. Speaking on the \u201cHappy Sad Confused\u201d podcast, Feige said bluntly: \u201cI am feeling like a gigantic loser and failure that we didn\u2019t get off the ground with Mahershala.\u201d Although the studio chief admitted at the same time it was \u201cvery exciting\u201d to have Wesley Snipes back as Blade in 2024\u2019s \u201cDeadpool and Wolverine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMarvel originally announced its \u201cBlade\u201d movie with Ali in July 2019. Bassam Tariq was the first director to join the movie, but he exited in September 2022 roughly two months before it was set to begin shooting. Several screenwriters came and went during development, 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>\u00a0in June 2024.<\/p>\n

\n\tVariety\u00a0reported in November 2023<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cBlade\u201d had gone through at least five writers. One person familiar with the script changes said the story at one point morphed into a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons. Speculation at the time said that Marvel was still looking to make the film but on a budget of less than $100 million. Marvel Studios\u00a0officially took \u201cBlade\u201d off its release calendar in fall 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<\/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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe didn\u2019t want to simply just put a leather outfit on him and have him start killing vampires. It had to be unique,\u201d Feige explained. \u201cIt fell into the time when we started pulling back and saying, \u2018Only accept insanely great.\u2019 And it wasn\u2019t \u2018insanely great\u2019 at the time. We didn\u2019t feel like, as we often do, you can have a good script and make it a great script through production. We didn\u2019t feel confident that we could do that on \u2018Blade,\u2019 and we didn\u2019t want to do that to Mahershala and didn\u2019t want to do that to us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige is expressing disappointment over the failed \u201cBlade\u201d reboot that was supposed to star…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48152,156,103934,60964,2529,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-535433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-blade","tag-entertainment","tag-kevin-feige","tag-mahershala-ali","tag-marvel-studios","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}