Yahya Abdul-Mateen II Says the ‘Optics’ at Marvel Are ‘Obvious’ After ‘Wonder Man’ and ‘Blade’ Canceled: ‘If I’m Disney, I Do Not Want to Be Attached To These Optics’
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II says the “optics” at Marvel are obvious after the studio canceled his Emmy-nominated series “Wonder Woman” after one season and failed over multiple years to bring to life the “Blade” movie it announced starring Mahershala Ali. Marvel canceled “Wonder Man” in July after previously renewing the series for Season 2. The show’s first season launched in January on Disney+.
“I was told that it had something to do with the viewership numbers,” Abdul-Mateen recently told Vanity Fair. “I wasn’t told what those numbers were, but ultimately, for whatever reason it was, I think they decided that it didn’t make sense for business, and that’s the decision that we live with and we keep on marching forward.”
When Vanity Fair mentioned the online discourse surrounding Marvel’s failure with two Black-led superhero projects (Ali called out Marvel in July for failing to develop his “Blade” movie), Abdul-Mateen responded: “I think the optics are obvious. If I’m a big business, if I’m Disney, if I’m Marvel, I don’t want to be attached to these optics.”
“It should be a priority to change that narrative and to do what it takes to responsibly change that narrative with quality stories, with quality resources,” the actor continued. “I felt that our show did have quality story, did have quality resources, did have quality actors and people, and did produce quality results that the viewers responded to positively, that the voters responded to positively. So our show does deserve some study and some real, hard information about why a show like this did not continue forward, because it had all of the ingredients that one would want in a show.”
Abdul-Mateen, who picked up an Emmy nomination for his role on “Wonder Man,” originally reacted to the show’s cancellation on Instagram, writing: “That’s life, right? Everything will shake out.”
“The show worked. And that’s my favorite thing about it,” he added at the time. “I could see it on the faces of the Youtube Reactors (because I watched along with y’all this time. Shoutout to y’all) and I can see in the messages I get saying how the show reminded some of you not to give up, and I feel it in the genuine love shared when I bump into some of you all during the day. So, thinking of you all today.”
Abdul-Mateen starred in “Wonder Man” as Simon Williams, an aspiring actor hiding his superpowers. Ben Kingsley reprised his role as Trevor Slattery after previous MCU outings. “Wonder Man” was created by Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Guest, with Cretton also directing the first two episodes.
Ali’s “Blade” movie was announced by Marvel at Comic-Con in 2019, but the movie failed to go into production after numerous starts and stops in the writing process. Several directors came and went form the project, from Bassam Tariq to Yann Damange. Ali told GQ he was training for over a year for “Blade” and then the movie never materialized.
“If they wanted to do it, we would’ve done it,” Ali said. “So I have to move on, and I have moved on. Again, you had me under contract, they have billions of dollars, if they wanted to do the movie, we would’ve done the movie. So we’re not doing the movie.”
Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige said on the “Happy Sad Confused” last month that he feel like “a gigantic loser and failure” for not following through on Ali’s “Blade” movie.