Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a Marvel movie 20 years in the making, and producer Kevin Feige teases there are as-yet-unmade wish list movies still to come. The Marvel Studios president, who began his career as an associate producer on Fox’s X-Men and Sony’s Spider-Man in the early 2000s, launched the now 25-movie Marvel Cinematic Universe with Iron Man in 2008 to spawn the highest-grossing movie franchise of all time. Part of Phase 4 of the shared MCU and its first Asian-led superhero movie, Shang-Chi fulfills a two-decade dream for Feige when it opens only in theaters on September 3:
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“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a movie that is, without exaggeration, 20 years in the making,” Feige told Celebrity Red Carpet Interviews at the Hollywood premiere of Shang-Chi. “20 years in the making from my earliest days at Marvel, there were lists of, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to make a movie about this?’ There’s still some things that have not been made yet on that list, but I’m so happy that we’re finally debuting Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.”
Marvel parent company Disney’s $71.3 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox made it possible for characters like Fantastic Four and the X-Men to join the shared cinematic universe. Disney+ series Loki introduced a formerly Fox-controlled character with the reveal of He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), a multiversal variant of FF villain Kang the Conqueror, and the family of four will follow in a Fantastic Four reboot from Spider-Man director Jon Watts.
“The truth is, I’m excited for all of them. I’m excited, and it’s not just the marquee names you know — there are hundreds of names on those documents, on those agreements,” Feige told MTV News in 2019 about the deal bringing Fantastic Four and X-Men, and their many ancillary characters, into the MCU. “And the fact that Marvel is as close as we may ever get now to having access to all of the characters, is something I’ve been dreaming about for my almost 20 years at Marvel. And it’s very exciting.”
Feige has not officially announced an X-Men reboot from Marvel Studios but made mention of “mutants” and the Fantastic Four at San Diego Comic-Con in 2019, the first event to follow the merger. He said later that year that the X-Men won’t appear for a “very long time,” most recently telling Screen Rant in 2021 discussions about the team of mutant superheroes “have been long and ongoing internally” at Marvel Studios.
Other famed Marvel Comics characters soon making their MCU debuts include She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany) and Moon Knight (Oscar Isaac) in their own self-titled series on Disney+, recent fan-favorite Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) in Ms. Marvel, an ensemble of Jack Kirby creations in Eternals, and Eric Brooks (Mahershala Ali) in Blade, the Vampire Slayer.
Starring Simu Liu, Tony Leung, Awkwafina, Michelle Yeoh, Fala Chen, Meng’er Zhang, Florian Munteanu, and Ronny Chieng, Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings opens only in theaters on September 3.
