Mahershala Ali says he still does not know why Marvel Studios never made his Blade, and he agrees with Kevin Feige that it was the biggest failure of the Marvel boss’s career.
“That’s a Kevin Feige question,” Ali told GQ’s Zach Baron on the magazine’s One More Question series, in an interview published September 22. “They had, as you said, a two-time Oscar-winning actor under contract and you got billions of dollars. That’s a question for them. I don’t mean anything personal to you, but I don’t know why it didn’t. To this day, I don’t know why it didn’t happen. I just know that it was, Kevin, he said it was the biggest failure of his career and I agree.”
Feige Said It First
Ali was responding to comments Feige made in July on the Happy Sad Confused podcast while promoting Spider-Man: Brand New Day. “I am feeling like a gigantic loser and failure that we didn’t get off the ground with Mahershala,” Feige said at the time. Speaking to press in July 2025, Feige had tied Blade’s delays to Marvel’s over-expansion into Disney+ series, a period when, he said, “for the very first time ever, quantity trumped quality.”
When Baron read that line back to him, Ali did not soften it. “I agree with him. I agree with him one hundred percent. One hundred percent. He should feel that way. I agree,” he said.
A Year Of Training And A Move To Atlanta
The new interview adds detail on what Ali put into a film that never started shooting. He said he spent a year training for the role and kept waiting as Marvel pushed the start date back again and again.
“I trained so hard I blew my knee out. I was just waiting for them,” he said. Ali added that he uprooted his family and moved to Atlanta to be ready for filming, only for the start to keep sliding. Then came the strike.
Ali, a two-time Oscar winner for Moonlight and Green Book, said the handful of films he has made since Green Book “should have been six or seven” and that Blade not happening affected how his career unfolded.
Where Blade Stands Now
Marvel first announced Ali as Blade on stage at San Diego Comic-Con in 2019. He was heard as the character in a voice-only cameo in Eternals, but the solo film went through years of delays and director changes before it came off Marvel’s release calendar. Ali confirmed to GQ in July that he would not be leading it.
The interview comes days before the release of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, which reunites Ali with writer-director Bassam Tariq, who was attached to direct Blade before exiting in 2022. Ali plays Latif, a devout hitman raising three children after his wife’s death, and has said the film let him use the fighting skills he built up training for Marvel. The film opens September 25 in New York and Los Angeles through Amazon MGM Studios’ Orion Pictures before expanding in October.
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