As the cards fell, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings ended up as an intimate story of Simu Liu’s titular character and his relationships with his father Wenwu (Tony Leung) and sister (Meng’er Zhang). As it turns out, however, Shang-Chi almost had a brother in the movie, and that brother may or may not have had something to do with the film’s big bad.
In one new interview, Shang-Chi helmer Destin Daniel Cretton suggested there was one iteration of the script where Shang-Chi had a brother who ultimately turned into a monster, one that may have had a comics inspiration.
“I mean, at one point, there was a moment when Shang-Chi had a brother that was left behind with Dad rather than a sister,” Cretton told Yahoo! Entertainment. “That was early on. And there’s inspirations from the comics for that character. And I think the brother, like, turned into a monster at one point.”
Screenwriter Dave Callaham then added that there were some things early on in the development process that Marvel Studios wanted them to remove for ultimately being “too crazy.”
“We were doing some pretty weird stuff at the beginning before Jonathan kind of pulled us back. He knows the world,” the scribe added. “I think Destin and I, when we got there, were like ‘We can do anything! It’s Marvel!’ No idea was off the table to begin with, to be honest, which was really cool of Marvel, to let the team explore a little bit, and then eventually they tell you ‘You can’t do that, that’s too crazy’ or ‘We’re doing that somewhere else, but we can’t talk about it,’ that kind of thing.”
Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton and produced by Kevin Feige and Jonathan Schwartz, with Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, and Charles Newirth serving as executive producers. David Callaham & Destin Daniel Cretton & Andrew Lanham wrote the screenplay for the film, which is now in theaters. The film is due out on home media release on November 12th.
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