Of all the Multiverse Saga films that came out post Endgame, Shang-Chi was easily one of the most memorable to fans while at the same time being one of the least talked about since the film left theaters. Over the years, a sequel has been thrown around as something that is being actively developed, but with Doomsday and Secret Wars being the clear focus of modern day Marvel, Shang-Chi 2 has once again taken a back seat to the point where fans were unsure if the film was ever going to see the light of day. In a new Crew Call podcast from the website Deadline, director Destin Daniel Cretton puts fans’ worries back to rest as he openly confirms the project is still being developed and explains why there has been such a delay on producing the sequel.
The newest Crew Call from Deadline featuring Destin Daniel Cretton was primarily about the Disney+ series Wonder Man Season 2 and can be heard in full by following the link at the end of this article, but prior to the end of the interview the director was asked directly about Shang-Chi 2:
Deadline: Can you tell us about Shang-Chi 2, what happened? Will it ever happen? Because I’m sorry, that was a very successful movie. It’s like, it was a phenomenal film, I don’t understand why there wasn’t a sequel, what’s going on?
Cretton: We are developing a second one, you know it, what’s going is what went on with the entire industry since that movie came out like – it was successful – it actually came out weirdly, it was successful at the time when there was like a new wave of COVID was hitting, so it was still successful but it was also I think many countries were completely shut down to theaters at the time. And, you know, after that there were just crazy changes all over the place. So it, it, was, it’s just a result of the industry.
There have been many unconfirmed rumors about Shang-Chi 2 over the years, but oddly enough there has been a large lack no information on the project since 2024 when it was rumored the sequel would be title The Wreckage of Time. While we can’t confirm nor deny the validity of that working title, we’re thinking that may not have been entirely true because nothing of the sort was mentioned at all in this interview.
Simu Liu was confirmed to be in the cast of Avengers Doomsday, but the extent of which his character will be featured is unknown. The post credit scene of The Legend of the Ten Rings showed Shang-Chi being brought in and briefed by the remaining Avengers, but since then there has been no mention of the character of his connection to the team in any capacity. This was still in the Kang Dynasty days, so there would most likely have been more for Simu Liu to do leading up to the scrapped Avengers film that would have come out this year, but since Marvel had to pivot as a result of actor Jonathan Majors’ legal troubles his character seems to have taken a complete back seat. Hopefully his inclusion in Doomsday will be more than just a minor role and fans will remember the level of quality the first Shang-Chi film gave us at a time when movie goers were unsure about the stability of the MCU as a whole with other projects like The Eternals, Black Widow, and Thor: Love and Thunder turned a lot of fans off to the universe as a whole due to inconsistent quality and questionable story-arcs that set up many different sprawling plot threads that didn’t really seem to have any coherent long term focus like in the days of the first decade of Marvel films.
For now, nothing else is known about what sort of story the second Shang-Chi may give us, because we are thinking that the rumored title The Wreckage of Time isn’t going to actually be a good descriptor of what to expect from the sequel. For now, we’re assuming that Marvel plans to let Doomsday and Secret Wars play out to get an idea of what fans respond positively to once again so they have an idea of which projects to prioritize moving forward. All these question marks emphasize our opinion that Marvel needs to get back to some sort of long term roadmap like they did back in the 2010’s, but for now we are still very much looking forward to Brand New Day, Doomsday, Secret Wars, and the introduction of the new X-Men which will surely be a focus of the MCU in the foreseeable future.
Are you looking forward to a Shang-Chi sequel? Did you think the first film was one of the best of the Multiverse Saga? Let us know your thoughts down below in the comments or on our Instagram, and make sure to catch the entire interview with Deadline using the source link below!
Source: Deadline
