As well as giving Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings its full title and a brand new logo, Marvel Studios also announced that relatively unknown Canadian actor Simu Liu would be playing the title character, with Awkwafina set to take a supporting role.
As if the full title of the movie wasn’t enough of a clue, after the divisive Trevor Slattery twist in Iron Man 3, it looks like the Marvel Cinematic Universe is giving us The Mandarin for real this time, with legendary Hong Kong actor Tony Leung set to bring the comic book movie’s villain to life.
Just announced in Hall H at #SDCC, Marvel Studios’ SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS, with Simu Liu, Awkwafina and Tony Leung, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. In theaters February 12, 2021. pic.twitter.com/VXaqJ5uN6B
— Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) July 21, 2019
During the panel, Kevin Feige had this to say about bringing the Ten Rings and their leader back into the MCU:
“The Ten Rings has been in the MCU since the very beginning. Those sons of b*tches. There was an imposter who plated the Mandarin in Iron Man 3. But there is a real Mandarin, and he’s coming to take on Shang-Chi in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.”
Destin Daniel Cretton is directing from a script by David Callahan, in what will mark the first Marvel Studios movie with an Asian lead. After the Mandarin twist in Iron Man 3 drew backlash from some sections of the fanbase, it was quietly retconned in the All Hail the King One-Shot, where Ben Kingsley’s Trevor discovered that the real Mandarin was still out there, and wasn’t very happy about someone trading in on his name.
As for Tony Leung, if you ask us, he’s pitch-perfect casting for the role of the Mandarin in Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings, with the 57 year-old actor becoming an icon of Hong Kong cinema after a decades-long career that has seen him appear in classics like Hard Boiled, Infernal Affairs, Hero, The Grandmaster and countless others. Suffice it to say, this project just got a whole lot more exciting and we can’t wait to see how it develops from here.
