There is perhaps no story more emblematic of Marvel Studios’ inability to get its house in order post-Avengers: Endgame than the failure to launch what should’ve been its easiest layup: the Blade reboot starring Mahershala Ali. Before the announcement, it was hard to imagine anyone other than Wesley Snipes playing the daywalking half-vampire, but Ali, coming off two recent Oscar wins and a standout performance as Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes in Luke Cage, was a uniquely worthy successor to the throne. Anticipation for the film immediately shot through the roof, and it remained high even as the years passed and the updates became bleaker and more intermittent.
But, eventually, we all had to stop fooling ourselves and admit that it probably wasn’t happening. Even Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige recently said he felt “like a gigantic loser and a failure that we didn’t get [Blade] off the ground with Mahershala.”
In a new interview with GQ, Ali confirmed that he has moved on from Blade and seems pretty confident that the film is fully dead. “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. 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, and I have moved on,” said Ali. “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.”
“We’re not doing the movie” is probably the most definitive answer we’re ever going to get about the fate of Blade. And if we want more details, that’s on Marvel, not Ali.
“I feel ready to move on from the Blade questions,” he said. “Those questions are for them. They didn’t want to do it, so they should answer that question.”
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