Marvel Studios surprised everyone this morning with a teaser release for their upcoming “Shang-Chi: And The Legend of the Ten Rings.“ Destin Daniel Cretton is directing.
Simu Liu stars as Shang-Chi, a hero created by Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin in 1973. There have been rumors for decades that Stan Lee attempted to get a Shang-Chi project with Brandon Lee made in the 80s.
While speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Liu said:
“The most exciting thing about stepping into this character was that his backstory has never been told before. We know so many different versions of Batman’s origin story, how his parents were murdered when he was very young. We know Peter Parker, who was bitten by a radioactive spider, and he loses his uncle. Shang-Chi’s story is very much unknown to most of the world, so we had a lot of freedom and creative liberty to make it the way that we wanted to.
When you look at the character of Shang-Chi through the comic books going back to the ’70s and ’80s, the fact that he existed and the fact that he was an Asian character was amazing. But at the same time, there are aspects of that portrayal of him that maybe could feel a little stereotypical. So when we first started to map out who this character was and what his journey was going to be over the course of this film, we were all very sensitive to not have it go into stereotypical territory.”
“Shang Chi” will hit theaters on September 3rd, 2021.
