Bassam Tariq, the first director attached to Marvel’s Blade reboot, has defended Kevin Feige after the film was scrapped, calling the Marvel Studios president “a good dude” with “a lot on his plate”. The IGN report covers Tariq’s new comments on the abandoned Mahershala Ali film.
Tariq made the remarks in a Vulture interview about his new film, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, which also stars Ali. He said Feige was adaptable and rejected online criticism that blamed the producer personally for the project’s collapse.
“He’s a good dude. … He’s got a lot on his plate, too much.”
Bassam Tariq, director
Tariq said the team had no script when the project stalled and that he had not been allowed to write it. He also stressed that the writers were working hard, framing the problem as a production that could not settle on a story rather than the fault of one person.
“We didn’t have a script. That’s what happened.”
Bassam Tariq, director
Blade reboot: the 1920s film Tariq planned
The Blade reboot Tariq worked on was set in the 1920s. He described a planned horse chase through an elaborate New Orleans set, beginning in a speakeasy where Blade would pretend to be drunk. The sequence was never filmed; the set had been built at Trilith Studios in Atlanta.
Tariq left the director’s role in September 2022. Marvel said at the time that schedule changes meant he would no longer direct, while The Hollywood Reporter reported that the project had gone through several rounds of script rewrites.
Why Bassam Tariq defended Kevin Feige
Tariq said Feige had the final word at Marvel and argued that the producer’s record gave the studio reason to trust his judgement. He pointed to Feige’s willingness to adjust Marvel’s approach, while acknowledging that the reboot faced the task of competing with Wesley Snipes’s established Blade films.
A separate Guardian interview reported that Tariq and Ali’s work on Blade included extensive fight preparation, some of which informed their later film. Ali has also said he has moved on from the project; tbreak covered his decision to leave Blade behind and his agreement with Feige’s assessment of the failed film.
Was the Blade reboot already filming when Tariq left?
No. It was in pre-production and preparing for a planned November 2022 shoot, but filming had not started when Tariq left in September.
What did Tariq mean when he called Feige adaptable?
He said Marvel listens and changes how it tells stories. He pointed to Spider-Man: Brand New Day as an example of keeping spectacle while building the story along the way.
