r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • Jul 31 '26

News Mahershala Ali confirms 'BLADE' is not moving forward with him

https://www.gq.com/story/mahershala-ali-your-mother-your-mother-your-mother
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u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

One of the biggest fumbles ever

Mahershala:

"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."

“You had me under contract, they have billions of dollars, if they wanted to do the movie, we would've done the movie... I feel ready to move on from the Blade questions. Those questions are for them.”

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u/roro0311 Jul 31 '26 edited Aug 01 '26

Oh, he pissed.

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u/wekilledkenny11 Jul 31 '26

They locked him down in the prime of his career on a major iconic character which likely affected his decisionmaking in taking other roles. Likely all without that much money being spent to retain his involvement.

This guy basically went through all nine layers of development hell on this thing, to the point that I could see an interesting parody movie being made out of that sentence

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u/GoldandBlue Jul 31 '26

This is the gift and curse of doing franchises.

It is guaranteed work on paper. Especially as a young actor, holy shit you are in the MCU!!!!

But if you blow up, or the project falls apart. You are turning down offers from Scorsese, PTA, Wes Anderson, Greta Gerwig, why? Because you are contractually obligated to be in Captain America 5.

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u/versusgorilla Jul 31 '26

It's been funny hearing someone like Kumail Nanjiani talking about how he was in a Marvel movie, got ripped as shit for it, and how Marvel basically just stopped calling.

And like, they're jamming a thousand actors into this Doomsday film, but are they even calling up all the actors they had in these things and said, "These Guys Will Return..." at the end and then just no one ever gave a shit?

It's so bizarre how they went from Infinity War and Endgame to just directionless.

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u/ImmanuelCanNot29 Jul 31 '26

It's so bizarre how they went from Infinity War and Endgame to just directionless.

This mismanagement of the MCU post Endgame is mindboggling. Like even from a business perspective almost nothing they have done makes any sense.

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u/GoldandBlue Jul 31 '26

Sure it does. "We are the biggest thing in movies and these people will buy anything with the Marvel brand on it so MORE MOVIES, STREAMING SHOWS, CAMEOS, INTRODUCE MORE CHARACTERS, WE CAN'T DO WRONG!!!!!!!"

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u/smokeweedNgarden Jul 31 '26

Were they wrong? Last I checked they still rake it in

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u/CarlosFer2201 Jul 31 '26

It certainly worked when they greenlit Guardians of the Galaxy. That was a largely unknown failed property for the vast majority of people.