Ever since 2019, when he was first announced as the new face of “Blade” during a star-studded Marvel Comic-Con panel, Mahershala Ali has been skillfully dodging questions about the upcoming vampire hunter reboot.
When asked what at all he can say about the highly anticipated (and as yet unscheduled) film, Ali was mum.
“What’s so funny is you’ll write this 2,000-word article and then 40 other publications will spin off one quote,” he said during a day of press for his latest release, the Apple TV+ drama “Swan Song,” now available on streaming and in select theaters. “And the thing I’m promoting gets buried and it’s like, ‘Mahershala Ali whispered “Blade” at night before he went to sleep.’ And really, I don’t have anything to offer yet that is really, truly worth anyone’s time. And so what I really want to do is preserve the space to make the character great and then talk about that if and when I achieve that.”
Ali made his official MCU debut as the character in a voice-only cameo in the mid-credits scene of “Eternals.” After turns in the Netflix series “Luke Cage” (as charismatic villain Cottonmouth) and Sony’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (as another villain, the Prowler), “Blade” will mark Ali’s third appearance in a Marvel project.
“Usually you’re not dealing with things that are this anticipated, so that’s new space,” he said. “You just embrace it and keep going.”
While the anticipation is new territory, the culture of confidentiality is not. “My real first introduction to that was when I did the ‘[Hunger Games:] Mockingjay’ movies,” Ali remembered. “You didn’t know [in advance] if the pages changed, so you’d get to work and the scene is totally rewritten. Like ‘What? I know none of these words.’ They would collect the sides at the end of the day and everything was such a secret.”
BLADE – Teaser Trailer (New Marvel Movie 2023) | StryderHD Concept
