Om man skulle sätta in uttrycket "det har varit många turer" i en tydlig kontext så hade Blade varit ett extremt bra exempel. Det har varit så många turer att man vet varken ut eller in, egentligen. Nu verkar det dock som (återigen?) att det inte blir någon ny Blade-film med Mahershala Ali i huvudrollen. Alis nya film, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother med Bassam Tariq som regissör (som också var tänkt att regissera Blade), har premiär nu i höst. I en färsk intervju säger Ali:
"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. 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."
Enligt Ali får han i varje fall utlopp för sin Blade-träning i sin kommande film. Alltid något, som man säger.
Marvel-bossen Kevin Feige säger så här:
"I am feeling like a gigantic loser and failure that we didn't get off the ground with Mahershala. We didn't want to simply just put a leather outfit on him and have him start killing vampires. It had to be unique. It fell into the time when we started pulling back and saying, 'Only accept insanely great.' And it wasn't insanely great at the time. We didn't feel like, as we often do, you can have a good script and make it a great script through production. We didn't feel confident that we could do that on 'Blade,' and we didn't want to do that to Mahershala and didn't want to do that to us."
Även fast Feige inte säger rakt ut att filmen är nedlagd till 100% så får vi ändå tolka detta citat som att loppet har gått för Mahershala Ali som vampyrdödaren Blade.