Many fans haven’t been happy that Marvel decided to shelve certain projects, from Wonder Man Season 2 to the Mahershala Ali-led Blade. Since the news broke, Ali has been candid about his disappointment in the decision to scrap the movie. Now the director of his Blade film just got honest about Marvel (and Kevin Feige).
Bassam Tariq discussed the silver lining to Blade getting cancelled druing an interview with ComingSoon about his new movie Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. When asked if the Marvel experience allowed him to create “such a personal film,” the director was open about the positives that he got out of it:
Kevin Feige taught me how to think big. I think for all of the things that people throw at them, the guy is phenomenal at, ‘Okay, how do we keep upping the ante?’ And I kept asking – or they call it ‘plussing.’ I think that was the term that they would use. So I think a part of me was also thinking similarly, ‘How do we do that?’
It’s nice to see the director taking the cancellation in stride. While he may have been disappointed, he did get a chance to work with Ali on a different major and personal project, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. The actor plays Latif, who, according to the official description, is a “devoutly religious hitman who struggles to balance work, faith and fatherhood.” That certainly sounds like a complex enough role for Ali to really sink his teeth into. Plus, judging by the rave reviews Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother has been getting, I think it’s easy to find some positives in the Blade situation.
One critic has even noted that Ali was “perfectly cast in the role of Latif,” and if you’ve already seen it, you’ll understand what has people talking and this entry on the 2026 movie schedule. Plus, it has proven what Tariq means when he said he figured out “how to think big.” It was one of this year’s most anticipated action movies for a reason.
Now, the director is crediting another positive to the Blade cancellation and explains how this helped Your Mother:
The other plus, or the other thing that I took, was really audience and listening and hearing the audience. Whereas their testing has to be so careful because they have to keep everything so secretive, I was able to really test my movie with audiences and to really see where I needed to cut or where I needed to explain a little bit more, and how to make sure that the fights would land better and all these other things.
Given that some critics are calling the movie “a leading role suitable for an Oscar-winning actor of [Ali’s] stature,” I think it’s safe to say that Tariq found the secret ingredient.
However, this doesn’t mean the director doesn’t think about what could have been with Blade, and he has previously shared some details of the scrapped project. The movie would have taken place (at least partly) in the 1920s, and even had Oscar-winning costume designer Ruth Carter attached.
It’s unclear how it would have connected to the MCU, but we do know that a major train set had been built and they had already cast some impressive names, such as Lanterns star Aaron Pierre. It’s sad to see this concept get swept under the rug, because I for one would have loved to see flapper vampires.
Maybe one day Kevin Feige will take another stab at the idea, but for now we can check out Ali in Your Mother and appreciate Tariq’s honest perspective on Blade's cancellation.
