Marvel Studios has officially hired director Destin Daniel Cretton to take on Shang-Chi, according to Deadline, which will become the studio’s first film to feature an Asian lead character.
Cretton is known for helming 2013 indie hit Short Term 12, which starred Captain Marvel‘s Brie Larson as a woman working in a group home for teenagers. He later reunited with Larson for 2017’s The Glass Castle and is now working with Larson and Black Panther‘s Michael B Jordan on Just Mercy, an upcoming drama based on the memoir of Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson.
Shang-Chi has also already found its writer in Asian-American scribe David Callaham, co-writer for Zombieland: Double Tap and Wonder Woman 1984. Callaham is also currently working on the script for the sequel for Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse.
Shang-Chi will revolve around the Marvel Comics character created by writer Steve Englehart and artist Jim Starlin, who made his first appearance in Special Marvel Edition #15 in 1973. He is affiliated with the Avengers, the Secret Avengers, Heroes for Hire, ‘Marvel Knights’ and MI-6. Shang-Chi is a master of Kung-Fu, a superb athlete, a master of martial arts and has the ability to create duplicates of himself.
The film will reportedly explore aspects of Shang-Chi’s Chinese-American background in a story that will borrow from the comics, and will “modernise the hero to avoid stereotypes that many comic characters of that era were saddled with.” It will also explore the storyline involving Shang-Chi’s villainous father, the Devil’s Doctor.
Shang-Chi doesn’t yet have a release date. Get all the latest superhero news with every issue of SciFiNow.