Mahershala Ali Keeps Dunking on Marvel, Says Thanks for the Free Money

Near the end of July, Mahershala Ali dropped a bombshell in the pages of GQ by revealing that his relationship with Marvel was over. In no uncertain terms, Ali called out the studio for failing to get his Blade movie off the ground for seven years. “You had me under contract, they have billions of dollars, if they wanted to do the movie, we would’ve done the movie,” Ali said with no flaws in his logic.

However, Marvel’s mistake ended up being a blessing for Ali’s latest flick, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, which is racking up rave reviews at TIFF as we speak. For more salt in Marvel’s eye, the film is directed by Bassam Tariq, who was originally attached to direct Ali’s version of Blade. Just huge ball drops all around, but wait there’s more.

While promoting Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother at TIFF, Ali revealed that Marvel essentially helped pay for the movie thanks to fight training for Blade that never saw the light of day.

Via IGN:

“It was a little more than a year,” Ali said of his time training for Blade, in conversation with Deadline. “And actually I’m really grateful, they helped pay for our movie, so thank you. We wouldn’t, we couldn’t have afforded to… there’s no way we could have [done] this film and I got to go train for a year. So at this point, I’m so grateful that they made a wonderful contribution to our film.”

If you think that may have left the door for Marvel and Ali to patch things up, not so much. When asked if his Blade is truly dead, Ali didn’t hesitate.

“I’m done. I’m doing this and anything else moving forward. I’m over that, I’m done with that.”

Guys, I think he’s done. Call it a hunch.