Ms. Marvel Star Iman Vellani Confirmed for First Non-Marvel Acting Role

Actrss Iman Vellani just booked her first non-MCU role, joining the cast of the upcoming YA fantasy movie Shiver. Shiver is a romantic fantasy based on a novel by Maggie Stiefvater, and the film adaptation began filming last month. On Monday, Deadline reported several new casting announcements for the movie, including Vellani in an unnamed role.

Shiver is about a young woman named Grace (Maddie Ziegler) who was saved from danger by a wolf with yellow eyes as a child. Years later, she encounters a young man with the same distinctive eyes and falls in love with him. It’s an adaptation of Stiefvater’s 2009 novel – the first in a series of four called The Wolves of Mercy Falls. The movie will be directed and co-written by Claire McCarthy, who worked with Jett Tattersall on the script. Pan star Levi Miller plays Sam, but so far the other cast members’ roles haven’t been revealed.

This will be a big shift for Vellani, who has only appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as an actress so far. Now 22 years old, she made her debut in the Disney+ miniseries Ms. Marvel as the titular hero. She returned last year on the big screen in The Marvels – a sequel to Captain Marvel that tied in her series as well. The movie got mixed reviews but Vellani’s performance was generally praised. She is expected to continue playing a big part in the MCU, with her next appearance coming in the Disney+ animated series Marvel Zombies.

It’s unclear if Vellani has sought work outside of Marvel in all that time since her passion for superheroes runs deep. Last year, she made her debut as a comic book writer on the series Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant. She and co-writer Sabir Pirzada have worked on other Marvel Comics together since then, and are expected to continue. Meanwhile, writer Sana Amanat told Empire that Vellani’s enthusiasm for the characters and their history was a big part of why she was cast as Kamala Khan.

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Shiver will be an easy first step out of the MCU, keeping Vellani in the genre fiction space with a similar target audience. The movie is expected to wrap filming next month, but there’s no word on when it might premiere. In the meantime, Stiefvater’s books are available now in print, digital and audiobook formats. Ms. Marvel and The Marvels are both streaming on Disney+.