Tariq Salvages Blade Fight Prep for Mahershala Ali Thriller — SkimNews
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- Bassam Tariq premiered his thriller "Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother" at the Toronto film festival, starring Mahershala Ali as Latif — a devout Muslim contract killer who uses a sword as a negotiated extension of his faith, dispensing victims he believes to have offended God.
- Tariq departed Marvel's Blade reboot in 2022 after a year and a half of prep that included extensive fight training and choreography for Ali; Ali has since confirmed the long-delayed reboot 'is simply not happening.'
- The fight choreography developed for Blade was salvaged and brought into "Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother," where it powers the action of the father-driven thriller — Tariq says he's 'a lot happier' working outside the Marvel machine.
- John Cho co-stars as Pastor Hwan, a militant evangelical Christian waging an armed crusade — Tariq frames the film as a portrait of Houston's cultural tapestry and the hostility between siloed religious communities, written amid what he calls a politicized 'dark moment right now' in Texas.
- Tariq drew the film's opening — Latif desperately scouring for breast milk after his wife's death — from a 2014 experience in which he searched New York City for breast milk when his wife was hospitalized after childbirth, triggering his own crisis of faith.
- The film releases in the US immediately, in Australia on October 9, and in the UK on November 20.
Why it matters: Tariq spent roughly 18 months prepping Marvel's Blade reboot before it shut down in 2022 with no footage shot. The fight work he and Ali built became the action backbone of an intimate TIFF-premiering thriller — a concrete example of how discarded tentpole prep can fuel something smaller, weirder, and more personal when a director chooses to walk away.
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