Marvel Studios Developing Asian Superhero Film ‘Shang-Chi’

Deadline reports that Marvel Studios is fast-tracking a Shang-Chi film to be their first Asian-led superhero film.

Chinese-American writer Dave Callaham is set to pen the screenplay for the project while the trade reports that Marvel Studios is eyeing Asian and Asian-American directors to helm the project. The studio is reportedly searching for a director who wants to do something as “potentially monumental” as Black Panther by introducing a new superhero in a project that combines Asian and Asian American themes through the eyes of Asian and Asian American filmmakers.

In addition to his work on The Expendables and the 2014 version of Godzilla, Dave Callaham also co-wrote the script for Wonder Woman 1984 and he is set to pen the screenplay for Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse sequel.

In the comics, Shang-Chi is a skilled martial artist who was raised and trained by his father Fu Manchu, a Chinese crimelord and immortal sorcerer who repeatedly attempted to conquer the world, in an isolated compound located in China. When Shang-Chi was finally allowed to venture into the outside world in order to do his father’s bidding, he learned about his father’s evil ways and faked his own death before embarking on a mission to take down Fu Manchu’s criminal empire.

Introduced in Special Marvel Edition #15 in December 1973, the script will reportedly modernize the source material in order to avoid the character stereotypes of the time.

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Source: Deadline