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 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.

"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. …