As the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to ever-expand, we now have word on an exciting new film for the hugely popular MCU.

Courtesy of Deadline, Marvel Studios is now at work on a Shang-Chi movie. Granted, some of you out there may be mouthing “who?”, but we’re going to go out on a limb and say that you might’ve thought the exact same thing when a ragtag bunch known as the Guardians of the Galaxy were first confirmed for their own big-screen outing. And much like the Guardians, spotlighting Shang-Chi is yet another move by Marvel Studios and Disney to continuously diversify this shared cinematic realm.

For those not overly familiar with Shang-Chi, he is a character who debuted back in 1973’s Marvel Special Edition #15 as a creation of Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin. The son of Fu-Manchu, Shang-Chi is brought up to be the true master of kung fu – only for that to all take a surprise turn when he realises that his father was actually up to no good. Of course, the creation of this character was done as a way to capitalise on the martial arts boom ushered in by Bruce Lee in the ’60s and ‘70s, and like those kung fu movies of the day, Shang-Chi wasn’t quite so popular by the time the ‘80s rolled around. In fact, his own title – Master of Kung Fu – was cancelled in 1983, leaving him as simply a supporting character who would occasionally turn up in other heroes’ stories. That was until more modern times, though, with Shang-Chi having featured as part of the Secret Avengers and even the main Avengers team more recently.

Marvel Studios is currently on the hunt for an Asian director to tackle this Shang-Chi picture, with the plan being to build a corner of the MCU that focuses on Asian and Asian-American themes. As part of that, Chinese-American writer David Callaham has already been brought in to pen the Shang-Chi movie. Callaham has recently been involved in co-writing Wonder Woman 1984, the initial drafts of Zombieland 2, created The Expendables, and has already been pegged to pen the sequel to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

As ever, expect more on this Shang-Chi film as we get it.