‘I have moved on’: Mahershala Ali puts ‘Blade’ conversation to rest ahead of upcoming ‘Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’ film

The actor had been attached to play the heroic vampire as Marvel Studios rode the high of “Avengers: Endgame” with a new slate of films.

Seven years after it was first announced during San Diego Comic-Con, Mahershala Ali is done talking about “Blade.”

The actor had been attached to play the heroic vampire as Marvel Studios rode the high of “Avengers: Endgame” with a new slate of films. But after several delays, numerous directors being brought on and then quitting, and no clear vision for the film, it was ultimately scrapped.

In a new interview with GQ ahead of the release of his upcoming action film “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” with one-time “Blade” director Bassam Tariq, Ali firmly stated he was no longer interested in the film, nor did he even want to be asked about it for future interviews.

“When I look at what is for me, is it was either this or that — and I’ll take this,” he told the outlet. “No offense to them. I’ve been doing this professionally for pushing 30 years now, and one thing I’ve learned is that what is for you is for you and what is not is not.”

He added, “For whatever reason, that project is not for me. If they wanted to do it, we would’ve done it. So I have to move on, and I have moved on. Again, you had me under contract, they have billions of dollars, if they wanted to do the movie, we would’ve done the movie. So we’re not doing the movie.”

“But I feel ready to move on from the ‘Blade’ questions. Those questions are for them. They didn’t want to do it, so they should answer that question.”

Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige openly voiced his displeasure that the “Blade” movie with Ali starring as the titular anti-hero never got off the ground.

“I am feeling like a gigantic loser and failure that we didn’t get off the ground with Mahershala,” Feige said on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast last week. “We didn’t want to simply just put a leather outfit on him and have him start killing vampires. It had to be unique. It fell into the time when we started pulling back and saying, ‘Only accept insanely great.’ And it wasn’t ‘insanely great’ at the time. We didn’t feel like, as we often do, you can have a good script and make it a great script through production. We didn’t feel confident that we could do that on ‘Blade,’ and we didn’t want to do that to Mahershala and didn’t want to do that to us.”

In “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother,” Ali gets to utilize some of the stunt and sword work he learned while in preparation for “Blade.” The film, which also stars Giancarlo Esposito, Tiffany Boone and Tramell Tillman, spotlights Ali as a trained hitman who faces a crisis of faith as he tries to protect his family while his personal resolve crumbles. Ali wrote the script for the film, leaning mostly on personal tragedy, and the pair once again connected to craft one of the more anticipated films of the year.

Still, Ali holds no regrets for what could have been with his Marvel debut and the next chapter in the anti-hero’s presentation on screen.

“When I look at this and ‘Blade,’ I couldn’t have done both, and the reason this even exists is because that project fell apart and Bassam had the time, space, energy, and focus to go and write this and then re-approach me,” Ali said. “And I was able to use those skills that I had been working on for over a year training for ‘Blade.’ In that way, I feel creatively redeemed on some level, just in my own journey between me, myself, and I.”