Kevin Feige looks back on the Blade’s failure with Mahershala Ali: “I feel like a big loser”
The boss of Marvel regrets the abandonment of the film, which experienced so many problems in pre-production.
This is a rare admission from Kevin Feige.
Podcast guest Happy Sad Confusedthe president of Marvel Studios returned to one of the studio’s biggest recent failures: the abandonment of the reboot of Blade worn by Mahershala Ali.
“I feel like a huge loser, of having failed, because we didn’t manage to launch production of the Blade with Mahershala.”
It must be said that Marvel announced the project at San Diego Comic-Con… in July 2019. Since then, the film has become one of the most chaotic developments in the history of the MCU. The first director, Bassam Tariq, leaves the project in September 2022, a few weeks before filming is scheduled to begin. He is replaced by Yann Demange, who also abandons the film in 2024. In the meantime, the screenwriters come one after the other: Stacy Osei-Kuffour, Michael Starrbury and several other authors will try to relaunch a constantly revised scenario.
No less than five screenwriters took turns on the project. At one point, the film would even become a story primarily focused on female characters, with a narrative focused more on life lessons than on the famous vampire hunter. Faced with these difficulties, Marvel ended up withdrawing Blade of its release schedule in fall 2024. The studio has since never communicated a new date. Kevin Feige, however, prefers to keep one positive point:
“Despite everything, it was very exciting to find Wesley Snipes in Deadpool & Wolverine.”
The surprise return of the historic interpreter of Blade in the 2024 blockbuster allowed fans to rediscover the character, even if the new incarnation worn by Mahershala Ali has, for the moment, only seen the light of day in animation, in the series Marvel Zombies.
It now remains to be seen whether Marvel will one day relaunch the project or if it Blade will definitely go down as one of the MCU’s greatest ghost films.
