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Seven years after he was first announced for the part, actor Mahershala Ali says he’s no longer going to play Blade.
The actor spoke with GQ for a feature piece about his new film “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” which he shot with filmmaker Bassim Tariq (“Mogul Mowgli”). Ali & Tariq were originally slated to work on “Blade” together.
Then Tariq departed the project abruptly in September 2022, just a few months before production began, and the project floundered for years with little progress as multiple writers tried and failed to get the script in working shape.
Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige recently said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast that “I am feeling like a gigantic loser and failure that we didn’t get off the ground with Mahershala”.
Ali, meanwhile, says he’s officially moved on from the role that never came to fruition. He tells the magazine:
“For whatever reason, that project is not for me. If they wanted to do it, we would’ve done it. So I have to move on, and I have moved on. [‘Your Mother’] feels very much in alignment with the type of work I want to be known for. I don’t really want to be known for remakes. I’d love to do original work that resonates with people and impacts them in unique ways.
So, I’m good. Again, you had me under contract; they have billions of dollars, if they wanted to do the movie, we would’ve done the movie. So we’re not doing the movie.
When I look at this and Blade, I couldn’t have done both, and the reason this even exists is because that project fell apart and Bassam had the time, space, energy, and focus to go and write this and then re-approach me. And I was able to use those skills that I had been working on for over a year training for Blade.
In that way, I feel creatively redeemed on some level, just in my own journey between me, myself, and I. But I feel ready to move on from the Blade questions. Those questions are for them. They didn’t want to do it, so they should answer that question.”
“Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” opens in cinemas on September 25th and will premiere at the upcoming Toronto Film Festival. Ali plays a recently widowed and devoutly religious hitman who embarks on a desperate journey across Houston to protect his children.
The post Mahershala Ali Has Moved On From Blade appeared first on Dark Horizons.
