Kevin Feige said he feels like a gigantic loser and a failure over Blade never getting made.
Mahershala Ali’s response: he should.
Speaking with Revolt, Ali went deeper on the collapse of Marvel’s Blade than he ever has, and he co-signed Feige’s own verdict on the project.
“To this day, I don’t know why it didn’t happen,” Ali said.
“I just know that it was Kevin. He said it was the biggest failure of his career, and I agree,” Ali continued.
“The quote was, ‘I feel like a giant loser and failure for not getting off the ground,'” said Revolt.
“I agree with him 100 percent. He should feel that way,” Ali added.
Feige made those comments in July, calling himself a “gigantic loser and failure” over the movie.
A Blown Knee And A Move To Atlanta
Ali then laid out what the wait actually cost him.
“I spent a year training. I trained so hard till I blew my knee out,” Ali said.
“I was just waiting for them. Pushing it back, pushing it back,” Ali continued.
“I’m still training. I’m learning sword work,” he said.
“I literally moved, uprooted my family, moved to Atlanta,” Ali said. “We’re there waiting to go, and they just keep pushing it back, pushing it back.”
“And we don’t make it. It doesn’t happen,” Ali continued. “Then it’s a strike.”
“I Can’t Deliver Until They Deliver”
Ali also revealed he never wanted the famous Hall H announcement in the first place.
“I went to them in 2019. That was my first meeting,” Ali said. “We’re at Comic-Con by 2019 in the summer.”
“I didn’t want to make no announcements. I don’t believe in the announcements,” Ali continued.
“Just do the work, and then you announce when the work is done,” Ali said.
“All this anticipatory stuff, I’m not a fan of that at all. But they want to do all that,” he added.
Then came the bigger admission: Marvel greenlit a story and never delivered.
“We did all that and had a story greenlit, and then we don’t have any deliverables,” Ali said. “And I can’t deliver until they deliver.”
“That’s not a secret. Otherwise we’d have a movie,” Ali continued.
He was turning down work the entire time.
“I’m saying no to things in that time because they own my schedule,” Ali said.
Ali said at TIFF this month that he is done with Blade and moving on, after telling GQ in July that Marvel had him under contract and has billions of dollars, “so we’re not doing the movie.”
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, the Bassam Tariq film Ali says Marvel helped pay for, opens in theaters September 25.
