{"id":820210,"date":"2026-08-20T19:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T19:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/820210\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T19:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T19:36:09","slug":"yahya-abdul-mateen-ii-calls-out-marvel-for-wonder-man-blade-failures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/820210\/","title":{"rendered":"Yahya Abdul-Mateen II Calls Out Marvel for ‘Wonder Man,’ ‘Blade’ Failures"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tYahya Abdul-Mateen II<\/a> says the \u201coptics\u201d at Marvel are obvious after the studio canceled<\/a> his Emmy-nominated series \u201cWonder Woman\u201d after one season and failed over multiple years to bring to life the \u201cBlade<\/a>\u201d movie it announced starring Mahershala Ali. Marvel canceled \u201cWonder Man<\/a>\u201d in July after previously renewing the series for Season 2. The show\u2019s first season launched in January on Disney+.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was told that it had something to do with the viewership numbers,\u201d Abdul-Mateen recently told Vanity Fair<\/a>. \u201cI wasn\u2019t told what those numbers were, but ultimately, for whatever reason it was, I think they decided that it didn\u2019t make sense for business, and that\u2019s the decision that we live with and we keep on marching forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Vanity Fair mentioned the online discourse surrounding Marvel\u2019s failure with two Black-led superhero projects (Ali called out <\/a>Marvel in July for failing to develop his \u201cBlade\u201d movie), Abdul-Mateen responded: \u201cI think the optics are obvious. If I\u2019m a big business, if I\u2019m Disney, if I\u2019m Marvel, I don\u2019t want to be attached to these optics.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt should be a priority to change that narrative and to do what it takes to responsibly change that narrative with quality stories, with quality resources,\u201d the actor continued. \u201cI felt that our show did have quality story, did have quality resources, did have quality actors and people, and did produce quality results that the viewers responded to positively, that the voters responded to positively. So our show does deserve some study and some real, hard information about why a show like this did not continue forward, because it had all of the ingredients that one would want in a show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAbdul-Mateen, who picked up an Emmy nomination for his role on \u201cWonder Man,\u201d originally reacted to the show\u2019s cancellation on Instagram, writing: \u201cThat\u2019s life, right? Everything will shake out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe show worked. And that\u2019s my favorite thing about it,\u201d he added at the time. \u201cI could see it on the faces of the Youtube Reactors (because I watched along with y\u2019all this time. Shoutout to y\u2019all) and I can see in the messages I get saying how the show reminded some of you not to give up, and I feel it in the genuine love shared when I bump into some of you all during the day. So, thinking of you all today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAbdul-Mateen starred in \u201cWonder Man\u201d as Simon Williams, an aspiring actor hiding his superpowers. Ben Kingsley reprised his role as Trevor Slattery after previous MCU outings. \u201cWonder Man\u201d was created by Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Guest, with Cretton also directing the first two episodes. <\/p>\n

\n\tAli\u2019s \u201cBlade\u201d movie was announced by Marvel at Comic-Con in 2019, but the movie failed to go into production after numerous starts and stops in the writing process. Several directors came and went form the project, from Bassam Tariq to Yann Damange. Ali told GQ<\/a> he was training for over a year for \u201cBlade\u201d and then the movie never materialized. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf they wanted to do it, we would\u2019ve done it,\u201d Ali said. \u201cSo I have to move on, and I have moved on. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMarvel Studios<\/a> boss Kevin Feige said on the \u201cHappy Sad Confused\u201d last month that he feel like \u201ca gigantic loser and failure<\/a>\u201d for not following through on Ali\u2019s \u201cBlade\u201d movie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yahya Abdul-Mateen II says the \u201coptics\u201d at Marvel are obvious after the studio canceled his Emmy-nominated series \u201cWonder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[22121,88,15078,206,120030,82646],"class_list":["post-820210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-blade","tag-entertainment","tag-marvel-studios","tag-movies","tag-wonder-man","tag-yahya-abdul-mateen-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}