Mahershala Ali Agrees With Kevin Feige’s Harsh Verdict on Blade’s Collapse, and Says He’s Finally Done With the Role

Mahershala Ali has broken his silence on the collapse of Marvel’s long-gestating Blade reboot, and he isn’t defending Kevin Feige. In an interview with GQ’s “One More Question” podcast published this week, the actor said he agrees completely with Feige’s own harsh assessment of how the project fell apart, closing the book on a role he spent years preparing for.

“He Should Feel That Way”

The story traces back to July, when Feige told Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast that he felt “like a gigantic loser and failure” over Blade never getting off the ground with Ali attached. Asked about that admission in his own interview, Ali didn’t push back on it. “He should feel that way,” the actor said, according to Deadline, and elsewhere in the conversation added that he agrees “with him one hundred percent.” Ali was echoing Feige’s own words rather than coining the “loser” label himself, but the endorsement is still the clearest sign yet that both men consider the project dead.

Kevin Feige and Mahershala Ali at Blade’s San Diego Comic-Con announcement in 2019.

Years of Training for a Movie That Never Happened

Ali also detailed just how much he sacrificed for a role that never reached a set. He trained intensively in martial arts and sword work until a knee injury sidelined him, and he moved his entire family to Atlanta to be ready for a shoot that kept slipping. “I literally uprooted my family, moved to Atlanta, we’re waiting there ready to go, and they just keep pushing it back,” he said. Ali has pointed to the stalled project as part of why his filmography since his second Oscar win, for Green Book in 2019, looks thinner than it could have.

What Actually Killed Blade

Feige announced the project at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2019, positioning Ali’s Blade as a cornerstone of the MCU’s next phase. Bassam Tariq signed on to direct in 2021 but exited in September 2022 amid delays and creative differences, and Yann Demange took over that November before departing amicably in March 2024 after years of rewrites. Marvel pushed the release date four times, from an original November 2023 target all the way to November 2025, before quietly removing Blade from its release calendar altogether in October 2024. Reports since early 2025 have described the solo film as effectively dead, with Marvel said to be weighing whether Ali’s Blade could still appear in a planned Midnight Sons ensemble film instead.

In the same round of September interviews, Ali said he considers himself finally done with the character, a sentiment he’d first signaled back in July when he told Deadline he was moving on.

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Picture Source: Marvel Studios