Kevin Feige on BLADE Delays: “We Didn’t Want to Simply Put a Leather Outfit on Mahershala Ali and Have Him Start Killing Vampires”
Marvel Studios’ highly anticipated Blade reboot has faced years of delays and multiple creative shake-ups, but according to Kevin Feige, that’s all been in service of making sure the film lives up to its potential.
The Marvel Studios chief recently opened up about the challenges and why fans are still waiting for Mahershala Ali’s debut as the iconic vampire hunter.
First things first… Ali is absolutely still committed to the role. Feige confirmed:
“Mahershala is still attached.”
The actor signed on to play Blade back in 2019, stepping into the role made famous by Wesley Snipes in the late ’90s and early 2000s. For now, Ali remains ready and waiting. As he said last month:
“Call Marvel. I’m ready. Let them know I’m ready.”
So why the massive delay? Feige admitted the root cause was Marvel’s own push for quantity during the early Disney+ era.
“We had spent 12 years working on the Infinity Saga, saying, ‘That’s never going to happen to us.’
“We always had more characters that people were asking about than we could possibly make, because we weren’t going to make a movie a month — that’s crazy.
“Suddenly there’s a mandate to make more, and we go, ‘Well, we do have more’ … But maybe that’s what we fell into.”
This led to what Feige described as the first time “quantity trumped quality,” which was previously echoed by Disney CEO Bob Iger.
Blade was originally slated for November 2023, but got caught in the middle of this pivot, which forced Marvel to slow down and reassess.
“We didn’t want to simply just put a leather outfit on him and have him start killing vampires. It had to be unique,” Feige explained.
“It fell into the time when we started pulling back and saying, ‘Only accept insanely great.’ And it wasn’t ‘insanely great’ at the time.”
Unlike other MCU projects that can start strong and improve during production, Feige said Blade wasn’t there yet.
“We didn’t feel like, as we often do, you can have a good script and make it a great script through production. We didn’t feel confident that we could do that on Blade, and we didn’t want to do that to Mahershala and didn’t want to do that to us.”
Since its announcement, the film has gone through multiple directors and scripts. Bassam Tariq (Mogul Mowgli) was initially on board before leaving in 2022, and Yann Demange (White Boy Rick) exited in June 2024.
Feige revealed the project has had “three or four” different versions, including two that were period pieces. The latest plan? Keep it modern-day.
“Which is why we could give those costumes back to Ruth, and that’s what we’re focusing on,” Feige joked, referencing a humorous anecdote about lending unused Blade costumes to Ryan Coogler for his own vampire movie, Sinners.
Despite fan speculation that Coogler might swoop in to direct Blade, Feige shot down the rumors, saying: “He’s got Black Panther 3 to focus on,” confirming that the Wakanda sequel is in development, though he offered no timeline.
Feige admitted there’s a little hindsight regret. He said:
“Only in hindsight, I do. But I don’t. Because that’s the way we’d announced everything before, like that and had not not delivered.”
Between the pandemic, strikes, and even the studio losing major actors like Jonathan Majors, Feige pointed out that Marvel has been hit with a “tremendous amount of curveballs.”
There’s still no director attached and no production date, but Feige insists Marvel is committed to getting this one right. And Ali? He’s ready whenever the studio is. For now, fans will have to keep waiting for the Daywalker to return, but at least Marvel’s priority is making sure it’s worth the wait.
Source: Variety