Shang-Chi 2 is still happening, but Simu Liu says it keeps getting pushed back
The real world keeps making things more difficult for the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Aux News Simu Liu
Marvel’s Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings was a big hit, and one that explicitly positioned star Simu Liu as one of the new big heroes of the MCU. And yet, despite director Destin Daniel Cretton promising that a sequel is on the way, we haven’t heard much from Shang-Chi or the Ten Rings lately. Still, Liu says it’s going to happen at some point, it just keeps getting delayed.
Liu shared that information on Threads, the latest social media platform run by a repellent billionaire (via The Hollywood Reporter), telling a fan that he was originally told that the Shang-Chi sequel would “follow Avengers” (presumably The Kang Dynasty and/or Secret Wars, announced at San Diego Comic-Con last year), but he said that “keeps pushing back due to circumstances beyond my control.”
Those circumstances presumably include the WGA strike and the various accusations against Jonathan Majors—who played versions of Kang in Loki and Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, setting him up as the main villain of this story arc—both of which have made it difficult for Marvel to do much of anything. Of course, if Disney and the rest of the Alliance Of Motion Picture And Television Producers were willing to give the striking writers the money and respect they deserve, including much-needed protection against horrible AI bullshit devaluing their work, they could solve one of those problems pretty easily.
Shang-Chi came out in 2021, so it’s not like it’s been an agonizingly long time, but if anyone really misses the guy, Liu has been teasing that Shang-Chi will show up somewhere else soon (assuming any new Marvel things ever come out again). Also, Liu is one of the Kens in Barbie, so that should be fun.
33 Comments
I think one of the issues … i dunno… with the current marvel phase is how long it is taking them to get the new characters together. phase 1 obviously was short. intro, intro, sequel, intro, intro, avengers. phase 2 had more but got to the team-up movie with some new folks quickly. phase 3 had a lot of crossover, did civil war as an ersatz avengers well before IW/EG.Shang-Chi should be showing up somewhere, but he isn’t. There should be another actual Avengers movie LONG before we get to Kang Dynasty… I dunno, I don’t want the only Avengers movies to try to be Endgame level.So where is Shang Chi gonna showup? Not for another two or three years? Yeesh.
it’s so funny that the characters that have had the most crossovers are martin freeman and julia louis dreyfuss. maybe they were trying to re-capture the original coulson’style connective tissue…but i think they failed if that’s what they were going for.
I agree with you. I think the MCU tried to do way too much in Phase 4 instead of sticking to the formula from the previous Phases and building to a shorter-term event movie people could get excited about. Instead they seemed to just randomly assign projects to Phases and tried to set up multiple things at once with little to no payoff.Like if you go to Wikipedia’s Phase 5 site, the recurring characters they list (meaning characters who are in or cameo in more than one movie / show) for Phase 5 are Kingpin, Fury, Loki, Mobius, Daredevil, Thunderbolt Ross, Kang, and Jimmy Woo.In Phases 1 that list had Cap, IM, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Coulson, Fury, Loki, Pepper Potts, Rhodes, Eric Selvig, and Howard Stark on that list. And the Phase 2 / 3 lists just grew from there, always including the core Avengers and quite a few other side characters.
Doctor Strange had about six years between sequels, and if a third happens, it’ll probably also be a similar interval, so this isn’t so unusual. I quite liked Shang-Chi, but I’d be happy just to see him show up again. I can’t see how he’d fit in any upcoming projects, so I wonder if he’s shot a stinger for The Marvels or Captain America 4.
strange was in a marvel movie almost every year since his first appearance, is the difference.
Yeah, but that’s mostly just circumstance. Strange appeared at the tail end of the Infinity Saga so he didn’t have an opportunity to wait around. Carol Danvers has also appeared in an MCU property every year since her first appearance, but she hasn’t seen nearly as much action as Strange has in that time period.I’m not saying that Marvel is fully achieving its crossover potential right now, but just that the gap itself is not unprecedented.
if you’re specifically talking about length between solo outings, sure, but in terms of appearances of a major character it’s definitely unprecedented.was very surprised he didn’t get a brief moment in ant man 3 considering they live in the same city.
Antman 3 spent so little time in the real world, and pretty quickly moved into “you know what was cool, the trash planet in Ragnorok world” though.
i just mean like for one second in a montage.
I feel like he’s gotta have some kind of small part in The Marvels considering Captain Marvel showed up in the stinger at the end of Shang-Chi and you also see them together in She-Hulk. If not, then I don’t see the point of what they are doing. Might as well have just made a stand alone movie and just let Shang-Chi do his own thing.
If he’s anywhere, I’d imagine it’s in a post-credits scene for Cap4, which I’d have to assume involves SamCap reaching out to begin reforming the Avengers.
I’m not 100% on how it worked (it was 15 years ago after all) but I remember during the last writer’s strike, certain studios – or at the very least certain shows – cut deals with the WGA so that they could resume production while the strike continued. So… yeah, seems like Marvel could just approach the WGA and say, “We’re ridiculously successful. We’ll happily pay you guys what you’re worth.”Also:if Disney and the rest of the Alliance Of Motion Picture And Television Producers were willing to give the striking writers the money and respect they deserve, including much-needed protection against horrible AI bullshit devaluing their workThe thing I keep reading from at least some anti-AI folks is how “awful” things like ChatGPT results are. It’s so terrible, I’ve seen people claim, that they doubt it could even generate a complete screenplay which, uh, to me does the opposite of “devaluing” the work writers do. It shows how fucking hard it is to write, on top of all the other duties showrunners have to perform.The AMPTP and Corporate America, CEOs, et al are the ones devaluing writers’ work. They’ve been doing that for decades.
Marvel can’t do it. They’re owned by Disney. The people making the decisions are owners of mega corporations who all have a vested interest in moving away from paying people for jobs they feel can be done by computers. And they’re the ones the WGA has to negotiate with. It’s all or nothing. That’s how strikes work.
I understand that Marvel is owned by Disney (and I understand how strikes work for that matter), but I remember the individual deals during the last strike involved shows owned by large corporations, which is the only reason I even suggested it. Just couldn’t remember the specifics. I realize 15 years is a long time, corporations have gotten even bigger, and different people are in charge though.ETA: I just checked Wikipedia and was surprised to read that Marvel was one of the studios that cut a deal with the WGA during the strike. Obviously, they weren’t owned by Disney at the time. Looks like there were some other side deals, but I guess they were all smaller players in the entertainment industry.Still, as someone that believes the WGA’s demands are reasonable, fuck all the studios for not just paying them what they’re worth.
Me, yelling as they strip me of my Canadian citizenship: Simu Liu has no charisma! He’s like a sentient can of beige paint!
I thought he was the straight man on Kim’s Convenience, but it turns out he was just the least funny cast member
They should have given the role to Kimchee!
I loved all the parts of the first movie that were about Shang-Chi being a Master of Kung-Fu.
When they decided it needed to be another eyesore CGI fest, that’s when I tuned out. Really hoping the next one, whenever it comes out, leans into what makes the character unique.
Yeah, the movie was great until they forgot what genre it was halfway through and turned it into a movie about two CGI dragons bumping into each other.
The bus fight was really well done, if they’d ended with something like that instead of a bunch of unwatchable CGI schlock it could have been so much more.
The real part of the bus scene was a few on-location car crash effects. Everything else was shot on a blue screen soundstage in Australia.
Compositing isn’t CGI.
Eh. Lots of times bits of CGI are added when you’re compositing action scenes.
That guy does really have retractable sword arm though.
I just figured the climactic finale was a homage to similar live-action Chinese fantasy movies that usually are heavy on the CGI.
It’s like Superman, but Asian!
From a story perspective you’d think that the implied connection between the Ten Rings and Kamala’s bangle and whatever is happening in The Marvels that they’d be trying to move Shang-Chi 2 UP in the schedule.
And from a business perspective it would also make a lot of sense to lean into the characters that can have more standalone adventures while they figure out the impact that Jonathon Majors’s current issues are going to have on the overall Kang arc.
Yup. They can focus on that especially if they’re planning to connect that with Nega Band. We already had Adam Warlock, Phylla Vell and Super Skrulls. Just add Nova and you get Annihilation.They can just made a scene were Annihilus take over Quantumrealm and kill all of Kang.
I was of the few that wasn’t a fan of the movie. I didn’t hate it, I’ve just seen better. Like the Eternals I had the movie on in the background checking in on it with focus only skipping forward. It was there. But it was a financial success, it has it’s fans. So no denying it was a successful movie. Maybe if it was Iron Fist for Simu Liu instead of master of Kung Fu Shang Chi, I don’t know. But other comments are right in pointing out including this article that it’s only been a couple of years. And of something related to Marvel with everything they have going on, a few years approaching several almost seems standard. But if Simi is saying that it’s been a couple of years and there’s no plans for discussions or even planning, then I understand his disappointment. Usually you do have a team of people having discussions about what’s next, what new characters, or possible crossovers, shooting locations, marketing. But if the only results are we’ll talk about that later, then yeah that would be a downer. Keep in mind, besides from the writer’s strike and now talks of an actor’s strike that may happened, Disney/Marvel are trying to regroup on how they handle the MCU. With the latest movies and shows having mix bag results, they’re rethinking on the formular moving forward. They already said they were going to scale back on how may movies and shows would be released, which is actually just going back to a schedule of releases similar to 2010-2014. Shang Chi is just one of many now that will be dealt with on a different momentum. For Simi and fans that sucks, and for others they have plenty of options to keep them entertained.
“including much-needed protection against horrible AI bullshit devaluing their work”
I’ll be happy every time a G/O article takes a shot at this BS and the herbs that push it.
Also, Liu was a delight on The Other Two this season.
Here’s my thought: they’d save a lot of time if they started with what they did in first movie—a really exciting and energetic ten minute fight scene—but then rather than filming a mediocre and listless 110 other minutes they just stop there.
It’d be out already, and much more enjoyable, if for no other reason than a maximum of ten minutes is about all a rational human can take of Awkwafina trying to be a full-on comedic character. (Stick to low-key indie dramedys, Awkwafina, you’re so much better in them.)
I like the Master of Kung Fu as a gritty street level character. I don’t like the film as a comedy. I don’t like it as a CGI dragon showcase. And as far as I’m concerned, the 10 rings of power aren’t arm bands. They are rings that go on the Mandarin’s fingers, each with a ridiculous power.
Black people love dis movie more than Black Panther!