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Yahya Abdul-Mateen has weighed in on Disney’s pattern of cancelling Black-led Marvel projects. 

In July, Abdul-Mateen scored his second Emmy nomination for Wonder Man, where he plays a struggling actor who must hide his superhero powers. A few weeks later, Disney+ announced that the show would not return for season 2, reversing a previous renewal decision from earlier this year.

Yahya Abdul-Mateen says Disney blamed ‘Wonder Man’ cancellation on ‘viewership numbers’ 

In a new interview with Vanity Fair, the Watchmen star opened up about Disney’s surprise move. 

“I was told that it had something to do with the viewership numbers,” he said. “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.”

Disney+ has not released specific viewership data for Wonder Man. The show made a single appearance in the Nielsen top 10 the week of its release. 

Around the same time that Wonder Man’s surprise cancellation was announced, Mahershala Ali revealed that Marvel’s long-gestating Blade reboot was also dead. It’s hard not to see a pattern in those decisions, Abdul-Mateen said. 

“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. So 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.” 

Emmy-winner says Disney’s moves aren’t ‘favorable to its Black creatives’

Wonder Man seemed to tick all the boxes needed to make a show a hit, Abdul-Mateen pointed out, making the cancellation all the more puzzling. 

“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,” he said. “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.”

The Candyman star was more pointed in an interview with NPR. 

“When you look at the history of those projects and when you put them all together, there’s no way around it,” he said. “It does not look good. It does not look like good business. And it looks like it’s certainly not favorable to its Black creatives.”

He went on to say that given time, Wonder Man might have found the right audience. The show needed “a little bit more time to cook, because I think Black audiences usually find out and gravitate to the niche projects a little slower,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ali expressed frustration that Disney was unable to get a new Blade movie off the ground. In 2019, the studio announced the Moonlight actor would play vampire hunter Eric Brooks in a new MCU movie. (The character was originally played by Wesley Snipes in the 1998 film and two sequels.)

“If they wanted to do it, we would’ve done it,” he told GQ. “So I have to move 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.”   

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