Marvel Studios boss calls himself ‘a faliure’ for Mahershala Ali’s ‘Blade’ movie never getting made

Ali, as ‘Blade,’ was the most-talked-about thing coming out of San Diego Comic-Con in 2019.

Following 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame,” the next highly anticipated movie to come from the Marvel Cinematic Universe wasn’t only the sequel to “Black Panther,” but the debut of “Blade” in the MCU, namely Mahershala Ali’s “Blade.”

The film experienced several setbacks since its announcement in 2019 and was ultimately shelved. On the same day that Marvel released the trailer for the next “Avengers” movie, “Avengers: Doomsday,” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige made an honest assessment of one of the biggest movies that has yet to see the light of day.

In a conversation on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, Feige reminisced about the fact that he was part of the original “Blade” film at New Line Cinema, but mourned the fact that the Mahershala Ali version didn’t happen.

“I’m feeling very excited that we got Wesley back for a time in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ and like a gigantic loser and failure that we didn’t get off the ground with Mahershala,” Feige told host Joshua Horowitz.

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The character was first brought to the big screen by Wesley Snipes, who played “Blade” in the 1998 original film and two sequels. He reprised the role for 2025’s “Deadpool and Wolverine,” famously saying in the film, “There’s only going to be one Blade” as a nod to the Marvel film being in development hell.

When San Diego Comic Con was wrapping up in 2019, the most talked about moment was Ali, the two-time Academy Award winner, stepping on stage and donning a hat that simply said “Blade.” The audience in California ate up the news, as did fans online. However, the film didn’t get a vision that Marvel or any of its potential directors agreed with. Ultimately, the film was removed from Disney’s release calendar in 2024 and has yet to be re-added.

In 2025, both Feige and Ali shared their thoughts on the film, with Ali telling Variety that he was ready and that Marvel should “call him.” Feige cited a “unique” vision for the character and Ali’s portrayal as one of the reasons it didn’t get made.

“We didn’t want to simply just put a leather outfit on him and have him start killing vampires. It had to be unique,” Feige told a gathering of journalists at Marvel Studios last year. “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.”

He added, “We didn’t feel like, as we often do, we 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 Ali and didn’t want to do that to us.”

Still, if there is some form of light at the end of the tunnel when the “Blade” movie does get released, Marvel already has its star waiting in the wings.