Kevin Feige says Marvel did not get Blade off the ground with Mahershala Ali, and he called that a “gigantic loser and failure.” The remark is Marvel Studios’ clearest update yet on a project announced in 2019 that still has no official release date or director.
Mahershala Ali and 2019
At San Diego Comic Con in 2019, Marvel announced a Blade reboot starring Ali. Feige revisited that project in an interview with Joshua Horowitz for Happy, Sad, Confused, where he said, “I'm feeling very excited that we got Wesley back for a time in Deadpool and Wolverine, and like a gigantic loser and failure that we didn't get off the ground with Mahershala.”
That quote does two things at once: it puts Blade back in the public record and it makes the delay sound less like silence than a production problem Marvel has not solved. For readers tracking the film’s status, the practical takeaway is blunt — Ali is still attached, but the movie still lacks the basic markers of a moving production.
Over-expansion at Marvel Studios
Feige previously told Variety that “Mahershala Ali is still attached.” In the same line of explanation, he said the delay came from Marvel’s “over-expansion,” tying Blade’s stall to the studio’s broader workload rather than to a change in lead actor.
That matters because it narrows the issue. The problem is not that Marvel has replaced Ali or abandoned the character on paper; it is that the project has sat inside a larger slate that pushed it back while Marvel kept building out more titles than it could move at once.
Blade’s long franchise run
Blade is not a small-name property. The 1998 film, directed by Stephen Norrington and starring Wesley Snipes, opened to $17 million domestically and finished at $131 million worldwide. It led to two sequels, Blade II in 2002 and Blade Trinity in 2004, and a thirteen-episode Blade TV series on Spike TV that lasted one season.
Marvel Studios regained the rights to Blade from New Line Cinema in 2011, then announced the reboot with Ali eight years later. Since then, the character has also shown up in Deadpool & Wolverine, where Feige said he was excited to have Wesley back for a time, and in Marvel Zombies through Blade Knight, which keeps the name active even as the reboot stays unresolved.
Avengers Doomsday is set to release on Dec. 18, 2026, and a new trailer shows Robert Downey Jr. returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Doctor Doom. For Blade, the next real question is whether Marvel Studios finally sets a release date and a director, or leaves Ali’s version parked while the studio’s next event film moves ahead.
