Blade Director Defends 'Good Dude' Kevin Feige After Marvel Scrapped Mahershala Ali's 1920s Vampire Movie
· IGN
Blade director Bassam Tariq said he felt like a "failure" after exiting the Mahershala Ali-led Marvel movie, but he doesn't blame MCU mastermind Kevin Feige for how things went down.
The filmmaker, who was the first of two directors officially tied to Marvel Studios' now-canceled 1920s vampire movie, offered his honest thoughts about the project and even shared some new details about its story during an interview with Vulture. With a resume that includes films like 2012 documentary These Birds Walk, 2020's Mogul Mowgli, and last month's Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, it seemed Blade is the movie that hit Tariq the hardest.
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"I didn't know which way north was," he said of his Blade exit. "Afterward, I had to kind of disconnect from everybody. I don't know if that was the right thing to do, but it was one of those things where I had to find myself again. When you're doing it at that level, and it doesn't work out, you're like, 'S**t, I feel like a failure, because I couldn't do the thing that I wanted to do well.' You're trying to recalibrate who you are.
"My wife, my children, and the Atlanta Muslim community really were there for me. They helped me reground myself and understand what it is that I really care about. They all knew me as the guy that's directing Blade. And it was like, 'Oh, he left? Snap, OK.' I was afraid they would always be asking about this or that, but nobody ever talked about it. We just moved on, and they didn't really care, and it was so great to be around people that just didn't give a s**t."
Tariq had a tough time, partially, he said, because the ideas he had for Blade were so cool. Although his involvement came to an end because "they wouldn't let me write the script, and life's too short to make really disastrous things," the director teased that the now-abandoned sets they had in New Orleans were "incredibly designed" and "beautiful."
He said the 1920s vampire movie was going to have "an incredible horse chase through" these sets that started "in a speakeasy where Blade would act drunk." The problem was the Marvel crew "didn't have all the pieces to really get it together, to be what it needed to be." Tariq recalled the work of production designer Stefania Cella and her team as one of the most heartbreaking parts of the film's cancellation.
"That's the part that breaks my heart the most, all of the craftsmen and craftswomen that were working on the thing," he explained. "But all that energy also needs to be put into good words on the page, and that's not a hit on any of the writers. The writers were working really hard. It was just – I think Kevin can admit it, too – he had a lot on his plate.
Marvel announced its Marvel Cinematic Universe reboot with Ali as its star all the way back in 2019, but as updates rolled in through the years, it only became more apparent that it would never come to be. It was finally, officially canceled in July of this year.
Feige has caught a lot of flak – some even self-inflicted – in the aftermath of Blade's cancellation. He called himself a "gigantic loser and failure" over its failure to launch just weeks before it was finally killed, with Ali going on to agree with Feige's assessment of himself. It's been painful to watch unfold, but Tariq doesn't hold the MCU orchestrator responsible for how everything went down.
The ex-Blade director spent chunk of his new interview calling the Marvel movie producer "adaptable," explaining that he "listens and f**king changes." Using Spider-Man: Brand New Day as an example, he said it's clear that Marvel Studios listens and makes shifts to make sure viewers "still got spectacle" while "building with story along the way."
Tariq called the wide web that is the MCU Feige's world, "and rightfully so."
"He's done such incredible films, and he's made massive amounts of money for Disney," he said. "Of course they're going to trust him over me, who had made just one film. I made a film. I made Mogul Mowgli with a budget of $1.2 million, and we built this massive set that was the equivalent of like, 10 Mogul Mowglis. So, of course, the last word should go to Kevin. It makes perfect sense. We just never really had a script."
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is out now and just so happens to star Ali as the lead. Blade may never step out of the shadows in the MCU, but the actor said he's still thankful for the free year of training it gave him for his new movie. As far as Tariq is concerned, he's hoping Feige finds time to see what he's capable of as a filmmaker.
"I want to be clear: I like Kevin," he added. "I'd love to talk to him if he sees it. He's a good dude. I really dislike all this s**t about like, 'Marvel fumbled this. F**k Kevin Feige.' No, man. He's got a lot on his plate, too much. And I think we also had this impossible task of trying to compete with the first superhero movie, which is Wesley Snipes' iconic Blade. It's really such a massive undertaking in a way that affected so many people."
Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for IMDb.