Mahershala Ali Has “Moved On” from Blade: “If [Marvel] Wanted to Do It, We Would’ve Done It”

Mahershala Ali doesn’t want you to ask him about Blade anymore. “…I feel ready to move on from the Blade questions. Those questions are for [Marvel],” he told GQ. “They didn’t want to do it, so they should answer that question.”

The interview centered on the actor’s new movie Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, which happens to be written and directed by Bassam Tariq, the filmmaker originally attached to Marvel’s Blade reboot. Ali was announced as the vampire hunter back in 2019, but besides a voice cameo in an Eternals post-credits scene, he never actually played the role. Tariq left the Blade movie in 2022, reportedly weeks before production was set to begin. Your Mother… is the movie he worked on in the aftermath, eventually reuniting with Ali and getting to put all that Blade training to use.

“For whatever reason, that project is not for me,” Ali said of Blade. “If they wanted to do it, we would’ve done it. So I have to move on, and I have moved on… 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.”

Even Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige has admitted to Blade’s failure, blaming it on a “good script” never becoming a “great script,” and saying, “I am feeling like a gigantic loser and failure that we didn’t get off the ground with Mahershala.”

Your Mother… has Ali doing his own stunts, including sword work. “As a former athlete, I’ve dreamed of doing my own stunts. I was very excited to do stunts in Blade and trained for a long time for that, so it was a huge relief to get to put that work to use,” Ali said. Added Tariq, “…I saw the way he uses a sword on Blade. The first time he was doing sword practice on Blade, the stuff coming back was incredible. Then, here, it was exceptional to see the way Mahershala rose to that occasion; he was able to anchor it all.”

There’s even a scene in the trailer where Ali’s character brandishes a sword, which GQ’s Derek Lawrence called “genius-level marketing” as a nod to those who’d wanted to see Ali’s Blade. “I would agree with you,” said Ali. “I’m glad we were able to satisfy that and kind of move on.”

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is set to debut at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival in September. The movie’s logline reads, “Following the death of his wife, a devoutly religious hitman embarks on a desperate journey across Houston to protect his children, confronting the forces closing in around him – and the beliefs threatening to unravel within.”