Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has spoken candidly about the long-stalled solo Blade film, admitting he feels "like a gigantic loser and failure" over the project's inability to get off the ground with star Mahershala Ali. The comments, made on Josh Horowitz's Happy Sad Confused podcast, mark a rare and unusually frank acknowledgement from Feige of one of Marvel's most publicised production failures, and cast further doubt on whether a standalone Blade movie with Ali will ever materialise.

Feige unveiled Blade at San Diego Comic-Con in 2019, with Ali making a surprise Hall H appearance to confirm his casting. Since then the production has cycled through multiple writers and directors, was teased in a post-credits scene for Eternals, and was ultimately pulled from Marvel's release schedule with no update in years. Blade did resurface briefly in 2024 via a Wesley Snipes cameo in Deadpool & Wolverine, and rumours persist of the character appearing in a potential Midnight Suns film, but Ali's involvement now looks increasingly unlikely; he is instead reuniting with Blade's original director, Bassam Tariq, on an unrelated action thriller, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, due later this year.