Blade Director Defends 'Good Dude' Kevin Feige After Marvel Scrapped Mahershala Ali's 1920s Vampire Movie

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 one 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. "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." He continued that his wife, children, and the Atlanta Muslim community were supportive during this time.

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, he explained, was that the Marvel crew "didn't have all the pieces to really get it together, to be what it needed to be."

He 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. He noted that while the writers worked hard, it was clear that Kevin Feige had a lot on his plate.

Marvel announced its MCU reboot with Ali as its star back in 2019, but updates only made it apparent that it would never come to be, finally canceling it in July of this year. Tariq spent much of the 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 ensure viewers "still got spectacle" while "building with story along the way."

Tariq concluded by stating his support for Feige, saying, "I want to be clear: I like Kevin... He's a good dude. I really dislike all this st about like, 'Marvel fumbled this. Fk 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."