Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Mike Redmond | News | July 31, 2026
Heading into Comic-Con last week, Kevin Feige seemingly confirmed that Mahershala Ali’s Blade movie is not happening. “I am feeling like a gigantic loser and failure that we didn’t get off the ground with Mahershala,” the Marvel studio head told Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. Granted, there was some wiggle room in Feige’s words, and you wouldn’t be wrong for assuming there was an implied “yet” in his statement. Marvel is currently in the process of getting its sh*t together after a few rough years, so it would stand to reason that finally figuring out Blade was on the menu.
Not so much.
In a new interview with GQ, Ali has officially put a stake in the chances of his Blade movie happening. He’s done, over it, and would really like to stop answering questions about it. He’s also putting the blame squarely on Marvel, who is 100% at fault for this massive fumble.
“If they wanted to do it, we would’ve done it,” Ali told GQ while confirming his exit after seven years of stops and starts. The actor famously walked into Marvel Studios after winning an Oscar and put his marker on a new version of the character previously played by Wesley Snipes. Marvel had absolutely zero plans for Blade, but the studio didn’t want to say no to this incredible opportunity that just dropped in their laps. Clearly, they should have.
Because this news followed Wonder Man Season 2 getting cancelled, and social media is a hive mind with no chill, Bluesky is already accusing Marvel of being racist just days after everyone on the platform touted their indie cred by championing David Jonsson’s Black Panther casting. That one-two punch is obviously not a good look for the studio, but let’s take a step back and examine the reality of Blade and moviemaking in general.
For starters, had Marvel actually got Ali’s Blade off the ground, it would have happened during the studio’s flop era when it was stretched thin on resources thanks to running the franchise into the ground with Disney+ series. Let’s be real, Marvel was not firing on all cylinders post-Endgame, and there’s not a lot of evidence that it would have caught lightning in a bottle even with a stellar casting. Case in point: The original Blade movies.
Don’t get me wrong, I saw the first Blade in the theater and was blown away by a character I only knew as the motorcycle guy on the Spider-Man cartoon. There would be no Marvel without that movie. Blade II is a neat little oddity directed by none other than Guillermo del Toro, but it was critically panned as more of the same despite being the highest grossing Blade movie. Although, that was a very low bar to clear. Blade II topped out at $150 million, and that’s counting foreign box office. Blade: Trinity was an unmitigated disaster, but surprisingly, it still matched the box office of the first Blade. Creatively though, it’s rough. Blade is pitted against Dracula, and the whole enterprise is running on fumes.
There’s also the fact that, even after the Snipes’ movies, Blade has always been a D-level comic book character at best. And I’m being generous here. Blade has never come close to the draw of Black Panther, which was the role that Snipes really wanted to play. And that was way before Chadwick Boseman turned the character into the cultural powerhouse he is now.
In short, yes, badass dude fights vampires with a sword seems like an awesome hook that should print money. You just drop him in a location and let him mow down dudes John Wick style. Is that easier said than done? I almost died of boredom during John Wick 2, and again, Blade Trinity exists, so I’m thinking yeah. There’s a lot more to it than that.
Is all of this still a bad look for Marvel? For sure. They bit off more than they can chew, which has been their undoing this decade, and they ran themselves into yet another wall. That said, it’s weird to say this smacks of racism when Marvel has been fumbling its entire stable. But for the time being, it wouldn’t hurt to shore up the optics by not announcing the next lily white character directly on the heels of this news. That would be dumb, right?
Samara Weaving has reportedly been cast as telepathic mutant Emma Frost in Marvel Studios' upcoming X-Men movie, according to Deadline.
The film will be directed by Thunderbolts director Jake Schreier.
Read more: www.empireonline.com/movies/news/…
— Empire Magazine (@empiremagazine.bsky.social) July 31, 2026 at 12:26 PM
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