Oscar-winning actor Mahershala Ali wholeheartedly agreed with Kevin Feige’s description of himself as a “gigantic loser and failure” for not getting Marvel Studios’ canceled Blade reboot off the ground.
Feige made the remark on an episode of Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast in late July, where he spoke about how excited he was to have Wesley Snipes reprise the role of Blade on Deadpool & Wolverine — an emotion that contrasted sharply with his failed attempts at making Ali’s reboot happen.
It turns out that Ali feels the same way. The actor admitted as much during a September 22 chat with GQ’s Zach Baron, who cautiously broached the subject to see how Ali felt about the project now that it’s firmly in his rear view.
“That’s a Kevin Feige question,” he responded when asked why the film never moved forward. “They had, as you said, a two-time Oscar-winning actor under contract, and you got billions of dollars. …To this day, I don’t know why it didn’t happen. I just know that Kevin said it was the biggest failure of his career, and I agree.”
“I believe the quote was, ‘I feel like a giant loser and a failure,’” Baron suggested.
“I agree with him, one hundred percent. He should feel that way,” Ali continued.
Ali’s brutally honest remarks have gone viral online, and it’s not hard to see why; in that same interview, the actor freely admitted that he’d spent a year of his life in physical training to convincingly portray Marvel’s Daywalker, and worked out so hard that he literally blew out his knee.
“I was waiting for them… [they were] pushing it back, pushing it back. I’m still training, I’m learning swordwork. Name a martial art, I’m training in it. I literally moved, uprooted my family, moved to Atlanta. We were there waiting to go, and they just kept pushing it back,” he explained.
Ali first met with Marvel all the way back in 2019. It’s been seven years since then, and despite having a story greenlit and costumes made, the film never came to fruition. Some of those costumes were later used on the Academy Award-winning movie Sinners, while Ali said that much of the combat skills he learned while preparing for Blade were put to use in his newest film, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.
With Ali no longer attached and a stigma surrounding the failed Blade reboot, it’s looking less likely than ever that we’ll get to see Blade take on a new adventure — and that really sucks, because Ali was the perfect fit to play the part.
Image Credits: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for IMDb
Virginia Glaze
News Editor
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.
