‘Wonder Man’ actor says Marvel ‘optics’ obvious after Black-led project cuts

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II says he doesn’t need a decoder ring to understand how it looks that two of Marvel’s Black-led superhero projects hit dead ends within a day of each other this summer.

The Emmy-nominated actor’s Disney+ comedy series “Wonder Man” was canceled in late July despite having been renewed for a second season just months earlier. The following day, Mahershala Ali told GQ he had officially moved on from Marvel’s long-stalled “Blade” movie, a project first announced at Comic-Con in 2019 that had already been pulled from the studio’s release calendar amid years of script rewrites and director departures.

In a new interview, Mr. Abdul-Mateen was asked whether he sees a broader pattern in what Marvel does and doesn’t greenlight. “I think the optics are obvious,” he said. “If I’m a big business, if I’m Disney, if I’m Marvel, I don’t want to be attached to these optics.”

The actor argued the studio should treat that as a problem to fix rather than ignore, saying it “should be a priority to change that narrative” through stronger material and support for such projects, according to the interview.

Mr. Abdul-Mateen, who earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series for his role as Simon Williams, said he still doesn’t know exactly why “Wonder Man” was pulled. He said he was told the decision “had something to do with the viewership numbers” but was never shown the actual figures, leaving him to conclude only that Marvel “decided it didn’t make sense for business.”

He maintained that the show had everything a network could want — strong reviews, a devoted following and awards recognition — and said it “does deserve some study and some real, hard information” about why it was axed anyway.

When the cancellation first broke, Mr. Abdul-Mateen took a more measured public tone, posting on Instagram that “that’s life, right? Everything will shake out,” and thanking fans for embracing the series during its one-season run. “Wonder Man” starred Mr. Abdul-Mateen as an aspiring actor hiding his superpowers, with Ben Kingsley reprising his “Iron Man 3” role as Trevor Slattery. The series was created by Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Guest, with Mr. Cretton also directing its first two episodes.

Mr. Ali, for his part, has struck a more resigned note about “Blade” after years of stalled scripts and multiple directors, including Bassam Tariq and Yann Demange, cycling through the project. He told GQ that Marvel had him “under contract” with “billions of dollars” at its disposal and simply chose not to move forward.

“So we’re not doing the movie,” he said.

Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has separately acknowledged the studio’s failure to get “Blade” made, telling podcast host Josh Horowitz on “Happy Sad Confused” last month that he is “feeling like a gigantic loser and failure that we didn’t get off the ground with Mahershala,” referring to Mr. Ali.