Mahershala Ali says he has moved on from Blade
Mahershala Ali is done waiting for Marvel’s Blade film to materialise. Speaking to GQ about Blade and his new film, Ali said: “If they wanted to do it, we would’ve done it.”
Ali was announced as the MCU’s Blade at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2019. His only performance as the character so far has been a voice-only appearance in the post-credits scene of Eternals, while the planned solo film has passed through multiple writers and directors without reaching production.
Ali said he “didn’t feel great” about the way the project ended because he likes seeing things through. His frustration also sharpens the recent admission from Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, who said the script never came together and described himself as a “gigantic loser and a failure” over the breakdown. We previously covered Feige’s unusually blunt assessment of the troubled Blade reboot.
The two accounts broadly align: Ali was ready, but Marvel never found a version it was prepared to make. Seven years of development produced one off-screen line and a great deal of awkward explaining, which is a rough return even by superhero-development standards.
The abandoned Blade partnership produced a different film
Ali and former Blade director Bassam Tariq have reunited for Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, an action drama built around grief, faith, parenthood, and mercy. Tariq left Blade in September 2022, but the working relationship he developed with Ali survived the production’s collapse.
Tariq began writing the film during COVID after his wife developed a serious infection following the birth of their first child. While she was in intensive care, Tariq searched New York for breast milk because their week-old baby would not take formula. His wife recovered, and the experience became the emotional foundation for a story about vulnerability and the masks people adopt under pressure.
Tariq initially named the protagonist “Mahershala” in early drafts. He had watched Ali train with a sword for Blade and believed the actor could carry dignity, grief, and physical danger in the same performance. Ali, meanwhile, had trained extensively for Blade and described using that preparation in the new film as a “huge relief.” The sword still made it into the teaser, because apparently some pieces of Blade were determined to escape development limbo.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother puts family before spectacle
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother stars Ali as Latif, a devout Muslim hitman in Houston whose wife dies suddenly, leaving him to care for their newborn and two other children. His search for breast milk pulls him into a political and religious conflict with Pastor Hwan Yoon, a former soldier played by John Cho.
Yoon leads the radical Church of Divine Fire and gives Cho a highly stylised role involving a grill, elaborate clothing, and a major introductory song number. Ali said Cho initially had reservations about the bigger choices but committed so completely that those doubts disappeared in the performance.
Tariq describes mercy as the film’s central concern. Its action is designed around character, tension, and escalation rather than a procession of disconnected fights, while the story also moves into magical realism. Ali called it his first true action film, distinguishing it from the adventure of Jurassic World Rebirth and earlier roles in which his characters died as the action began.
Faith is equally central to Latif’s story. Ali said being Muslim gave him an added responsibility to handle the film’s Islamic elements carefully, while Tariq involved Atlanta’s Black Muslim community in the production. A woman who washes bodies at a mosque taught the filmmakers the proper ritual and was subsequently cast in the film.
Ali has traded Marvel-scale resources for a more intimate project that lets him use the physical work he had already done while exploring grief, belief, and fatherhood. Blade remains unmade, but the collaboration it created has survived — and Ali would clearly rather discuss the film that crossed the finish line.
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