Mahershala Ali Agrees Blade Was Feige's Biggest Failure — SkimNews
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- Mahershala Ali told GQ he agrees with Kevin Feige's assessment that the unmade Blade reboot was Feige's biggest career failure, saying "100%. He should feel that way."
- Kevin Feige told the Happy Sad Confused podcast in July that he feels "like a gigantic loser and failure" for never getting Blade off the ground with Ali.
- The Blade reboot, first announced at Comic-Con in 2019, was stalled by years of delays including the exits of directors Bassam Tariq and Yann Demange and the 2023 WGA strike.
- Feige said in a 2025 press sit-down at Marvel's Burbank HQ that the studio "didn't feel confident" it could turn a good Blade script into a great one through production.
- Ali said he spent five-plus years tied to the project — turning down other work, spending a year training until he "blew [his] knee out," and uprooting his family to Atlanta to wait for production.
- Ali has since moved on, starring in "Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother" with ex-Blade director Tariq, which screened at the Toronto film festival and earned Deadline's praise for his performance.
Why it matters: For Ali, more than five years of Marvel exclusivity — turning down other roles, a year of training that ended in a blown-out knee, and a family relocation to Atlanta — produced no film at all, and the actor has now rebuilt momentum outside the MCU by working with the very director Blade discarded.
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