By Leah Asmelash, CNN
(CNN) — Mahershala Ali is the star of the new action thriller, “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.” But he’s been asked about a different movie — a reboot of the 1998 hit “Blade” — while promoting the film.
The highly anticipated project would have brought the vampire-slaying antihero, with Ali in the role, into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But the actor recently told GQ he’s moved on from “Blade,” despite relocating his family to Atlanta for filming and training so hard that he blew his knee out. Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has said he feels like a “gigantic loser and failure that we didn’t get off the ground with Mahershala.”
Ali said he agreed: “He should feel that way.”
The “Blade” project, which fans and the media view as effectively abandoned, joins a list of recently stalled or scrapped titles from Marvel Studios, in stark contrast to the era when its Marvel Cinematic Universe kept expanding through seemingly unlimited spinoff films and TV shows. A number of those projects — like “Blade” and the Disney+ series “Wonder Man,” which was initially renewed, then canceled anyway — feature Black protagonists.
As planned series and movies fall by the wayside, Black fans are asking whether the MCU is purposely neglecting and sidelining its Black characters.
“All the Black-led shows seem to have a harder road to get either made or publicized or treated in the same fashion as other properties,” said Carl Waldron, a longtime Marvel fan who writes about Black superheroes on his website, Super. Black.
A representative for Marvel declined to comment on the record.
Into the spotlight and out again
For some fans, these latest decisions feel far removed from the era of exuberance surrounding 2018’s “Black Panther.” While Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther wasn’t the first Black superhero to make it to the big screen, the film broke box office records, proving that a predominantly Black cast and superhero story could have mainstream success. Its 2022 sequel, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” grossed more than $859 million worldwide and earned Angela Bassett the MCU’s first acting Oscar nomination.
Feige has spoken of Marvel’s commitment to diverse storytelling for years, reiterating his views while speaking to journalists last year. “Marvel represents the world outside your window,” he said. “I’ve always said it, before DEI and woke became a thing and after DEI and woke became a thing — are we after? I don’t think so.”
When Marvel’s green light seemed permanently turned on, that approach went beyond “Black Panther”: “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” (2021) became the MCU’s first Asian-led film. “Eternals” (2021) featured a multiethnic cast, as well as the MCU’s first out gay superhero and first deaf superhero. Characters given the spotlight in the MCU’s Disney+ offerings included Pakistani American teen Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel,” deaf Native American superhero Maya Lopez in “Echo” and a young Black woman, Riri Williams, in “Ironheart.”
More recently, the now-canceled “Wonder Man” — which earned lead actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II an Emmy nomination — focused on Simon Williams, a struggling Haitian American actor trying to conceal his otherworldly abilities.
But many of these projects, especially those developed for streaming, have either been canceled or set aside after one season. And fans have been scratching their heads over changes to the MCU slate in recent years, especially when it comes to projects featuring Black protagonists.
The “Armor Wars” film, originally planned as a series focused on Don Cheadle’s James “Rhodey” Rhodes (a.k.a. War Machine), is nowhere to be seen. (“What’s ‘Armor Wars’?” Cheadle quipped during a 2024 “Today” show appearance.) On social media, fan forums and podcasts, fans and other observers have asked how the “Blade” reboot could fall apart even as a new “Ghost Rider” with Ryan Gosling was announced. Some wondered where Monica Rambeau, a powerful Black superhero last seen in “The Marvels,” has gone — and why her last film is missing from the studio’s official watchlist for “Avengers: Doomsday.”
“I think that the people that have the most control over what they want to put out are either afraid and/or they do not know how to handle characters of color,” said Kira Brown, a Marvel fan who runs Room Full of Blerds, a platform for Black independent comic creators. She noted that the decision to backtrack and cancel “Wonder Man,” one of the most specifically Black stories in the MCU, especially felt like “a slap in the face.”
The series struck her as lived-in and real, while other Black-led MCU storylines have lacked depth. She pointed to a scene in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” where Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson is denied a loan due to having no income — an acknowledgement of racism in the banking system, but one devoid of any detail or explanation, leaving viewers confused as to what, exactly, the moment was trying to get at.
“You can’t just have Sam walk into this bank and get denied and not be brave enough to have fuller conversations about that,” Brown said.
That effort, and others like it, felt forced and designed to appease Black fans, she said: “Here’s a Black face on the screen. Here’s kind of a Black story, and we’ll sprinkle some Wakandans in it too, just to spice things up for you.”
Marvel did do better in “Wonder Man,” Brown said. In the third episode, Simon’s family hosts a birthday cookout in his childhood home, in the predominately Hispanic neighborhood of Pacoima, Los Angeles. In the scene, Simon’s family speaks Kreyòl — although to varying degrees of proficiency — and the camera lingers on the Haitian feast presented on the table.
While all walks of life can relate to the idea of having a family cookout, she said, “those dishes are what makes it a Black experience.”
Heroes fall on hard times
The MCU franchise seemed to peak in 2018-2019, as it wrapped up the final phase of the Infinity Saga, which included “Black Panther,” “Avengers: Endgame” and “Spider-Man: Far From Home.” But several films that followed, such as “Eternals,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “Thunderbolts,” performed far below expectations. Viewers began to complain of superhero fatigue as more and more new series debuted on Disney+ and still more films rolled out.
Then Disney announced it would reduce its “Star Wars” and Marvel Studios output. “You pull back not just to focus but as part of our cost containment initiative,” said then-Disney CEO Bob Iger in 2023. “Spending less on what we make and making less.”
As some projects moved forward, others faltered. The “Blade” reboot, announced with great fanfare at San Diego Comic-Con in 2019, cycled through multiple directors and screenwriters. (One of those directors, Bassam Tariq, directed Mahershala Ali in “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.”) Ali has been vocal about his displeasure with how Marvel Studios handled the situation: “They have billions of dollars, if they wanted to do the movie, we would’ve done the movie,” he told GQ.
Ali’s comments have struck a chord with fans, Waldron said. The failure to launch “Blade,” while “Ghost Rider” moves forward, feels like Marvel sacrificed a Black story for one that isn’t, he said. And as a father, he can’t help but notice that the MCU currently seems to lack characters that his kids can see themselves in — part of what made “Blade” so exciting.
Ali is right, said Jeffrey A. Brown, a professor at Bowling Green State University who has studied superheroes in media. If Disney can make live action remakes of every animated film and movie sequels no one asked for, then why not reboot “Blade”?
“They’ve got the money, the power, the distribution. They own everything,” he said. “If Disney can’t make a viable ‘Blade’ movie, then what’s going on?”
That doesn’t mean that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is intentionally discriminatory, Brown said. “Wonder Man” was a great TV show, he said, but might struggle to sell toys or other merchandise against more popular characters like Iron Man or Spider-Man, whose fourth Tom Holland-led film “Brand New Day” made $2.5 billion worldwide. Similarly, a new “Blade” movie might bring in $500 million, he estimated, whereas having Robert Downey Jr. back in the MCU could be worth $2 billion. (Downey is returning in the upcoming “Avengers: Doomsday” film, with the company announcing he’ll take on the new role of Doctor Doom, despite the MCU previously killing off his Iron Man character. “Captain America” actor Chris Evans is coming back as well, even though his “Cap” is supposed to be retired.)
“Blade” isn’t likely to get the same resources as other titles in the MCU, Brown said. “It’s really just a microcosm of Black representation in movies and television in general.”
Promoting diverse characters is also not as safe a corporate strategy as it was a few years ago. The Trump administration has been hostile toward nonwhite representation across an array of institutions, while it has also picked fights with Disney and its ABC network, leading to an FCC probe of the company and an ongoing legal battle.
The political moment could be affecting the types of stories the MCU may choose to tell and what characters it chooses to elevate, Brown said. A billion-dollar company has to take the current pressures into account, he said.
“They’re being told, ‘You change this, or we’re going to have the FCC take away your license,’” Brown said. “At the same time that the government is saying the Smithsonian can’t talk about slavery as American history. I think Disney is going to be around a lot longer than political administrations, but they have to walk that tightrope right now.”
Through the long course of the MCU project, Marvel Studios has succeeded in diversifying its fanbase. It’s succeeded in diversifying its roster of heroes. But who is actually important in the universe? Whose stories are integral the larger MCU timeline?
That’s where some fans see the MCU stumbling. “We’re still fighting to see those stories as viable in media,” Waldron said.
The MCU has shown that it can raise a superhero character’s stature in popular culture, or give a boost of super-serum to an actor’s career. Kyle Stanley, a media scholar at the University of Nevada, Reno who has studied the MCU, noted that Iron Man was a lower-level hero when the company decided to build a movie around him, and Downey was not the kind of star who anchored blockbusters. But the MCU made Downey’s character foundational to its entire MCU project.
It’s that type of treatment that Black characters are missing, Stanley said.
“Marvel is doing a great job of representation,” Stanley said. “But investment — that tells us who Marvel thinks is important.”
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