Mahershala Ali was announced as the star of Marvel Studios’ Blade reboot at San Diego Comic-Con in 2019 to a cheering crowd, but in a new GQ interview tied to his upcoming film Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, he confirmed the project is dead for him. "Not with me," Ali said when asked if the movie was any closer to happening, adding, "For whatever reason, that project is not for me."
Ali placed responsibility for the collapse on Marvel, not himself. "They 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," he said, adding that he has "moved on" and that any further questions about Blade's fate should be directed at Marvel rather than him.
The Blade project had been troubled for years. Director Bassam Tariq left in 2022, and his replacement, Yann Demange, exited in 2024. According to Kotaku, Variety had reported the script went through several rewrites, including one version that reduced Ali's character to a tertiary role in his own film. Marvel also brought back Wesley Snipes to play Blade in Deadpool & Wolverine, further muddying the future of an Ali-led version, though Ali did appear in a voice cameo at the end of Eternals.
Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige has also weighed in on the failed project, though the two sources place his comments in different contexts: Kotaku reports Feige called himself "a gigantic loser and failure" for not getting the film off the ground during a July appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, while Polygon reports the same quote came during press for Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Ali says the end of his involvement in Blade cleared the way for Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, a film he made with Tariq, Blade's original director. He described choosing between the two projects, saying of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, "I'll take this," and that the film "feels very much in alignment with the type of work I want to be known for." He added that finishing the project let him feel "creatively redeemed" after training for Blade. The film, in which Ali plays a religious hitman trying to protect his children, arrives in select theaters September 25. Meanwhile, a Blade video game is reportedly still in development at Arkane Studios, though Kotaku notes Arkane's future is uncertain amid layoffs and restructuring at parent company Xbox.