, the MCU’s first film to feature a protagonist of Asian descent.
It’s been a long road from comics to screen for this particular Marvel project. The publisher’s first attempts to make a Shang-Chi movie date back to the 1980s, and
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was originally slated for a Feb. 12, 2021 release date to coincide with the first day of the Chinese New Year, but pandemic-related delays shifted the release date three times.
But with the release of its first trailer, Disney seems confident that the Destin Daniel Cretton (
Short Term 12)-directed movie starring Simu Liu as Shang-Chi and Tony Leung as his father, Wenwu, known as “the Mandarin” will finally hit theaters on Sept. 3, 2021.