Mahershala Ali has confirmed that his Marvel reboot of Blade is no longer going ahead, seven years after he was announced as its star.

The Oscar-winning actor, 52, was revealed to be playing vampire hunter Blade in a Marvel film of the same name back in 2019 – however, the film has faced production setbacks ever since.

Giving a new update on the film, Moonlight star Ali has revealed that he’s “moved on” from the reboot after Marvel failed to make it.

Speaking to GQ about his new film, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, Ali said that he was introduced to director Bassam Tariq after the filmmaker was originally brought on board to work on Blade.

“When I look at this and Blade, I couldn’t have done both, and the reason this even exists is because that project fell apart and Bassam had the time, space, energy, and focus to go and write this and then re-approach me,” Ali said.

“And I was able to use those skills that I had been working on for over a year training for Blade. In that way, I feel creatively redeemed on some level, just in my own journey between me, myself, and I.”

He added that despite spending seven years in production limbo on Blade, he learnt that the film is “not for me”.

“When I look at what is for me, is it was either this or that – and I’ll take this. No offence to them,” he said. “I’ve been doing this professionally for pushing 30 years now, and one thing I’ve learned is that what is for you is for you and what is not is not.

“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,” he added.

“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.”

The Independent has contacted Marvel for comment.

After being announced in 2019, Marvel’s Blade reboot was set to hit cinemas in 2023 – however, production was stalled for numerous reasons. The film lost two directors over those years – original director Tariq, who left the project in 2022, and then Top Boy’s Yann Demange, who exited in 2024 – before its second release date of November 2025 was pulled from Marvel’s schedule.

The film also had the pandemic to contend with as well as the Hollywood strikes of 2023, which saw the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) join forces with the Writers guild of America (WGA) to picket the streamers and studios.

Last month, Marvel boss Kevin Feige addressed the film not being made, admitting that he felt like “a gigantic loser and failure” for letting Blade fall by the wayside.

Blade did make a recent cameo in the MCU however – but it was the version played by original actor Wesley Snipes. The 64-year-old reprised his role in 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine*. *

That same year, he poked fun at the Blade reboot facing production hurdles, writing on X that Marvel’s attempts to bring it back were “kinda rough”.

“Blade, lordylordylordy,” Snipes tweeted at the time. “Folks still lookin for the secret sauce, ridin snowmobiles in traffic, kinda rough. Daywalkers make it look easy, don’t they?”

While Marvel’s Blade never came to be, Ali did make a brief cameo as the character in the post-credits scene of 2021’s Eternals. He also went on to star in Jurassic World Rebirth, 2023 thriller Leave the World Behind, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and forthcoming film Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.