Shang-Chi’s Destin Daniel Cretton to lead Avengers: The Kang Dynasty

Maybe that's why Marvel didn't mention a Shang-Chi sequel at Comic-Con?

By Sam Barsanti | July 26, 2022 | 8:06pm

Aux News Avengers

Shang-Chi’s Destin Daniel Cretton to lead Avengers: The Kang Dynasty

Destin Daniel Cretton Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Asia Society Southern California

Who needs Comic-Con? Just a few days after Marvel’s big showcase in San Diego, at which it announced its next big slate of movies, showed off a trailer for Wakanda Forever, and revealed some Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 footage that we’re not allowed to see, The Hollywood Reporter has landed a big Marvel scoop: Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton will be directing the next Avengers movies, which we learned over the weekend will be called Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.

This is obviously a big deal, since these Avengers movies tend to be culture-defining events (even the one nobody likes made a billion dollars worldwide), and working on Infinity War and Endgame seems to have granted Joe and Anthony Russo a license to print money without even having to work too hard, so this is (again, obviously) a huge vote of confidence from Marvel Studios and Kevin Feige.

Most Popular

The Hollywood Reporter notes that the studio signed Cretton to an overall deal after the success of Shang-Chi (it dramatically outperformed Black Widow last year), which is how he landed not only this gig but an opportunity to produce a Wonder Man show for Disney+ and direct an upcoming Shang-Chi sequel—though, notably, there was no mention of Shang-Chi 2 during Comic-Con, despite the first movie’s insistence that its eponymous hero is definitely a member of the Avengers now, so we should’ve guessed that Cretton was up to something.

The Kang Dynasty is still several years out, with Marvel penciling it in for May 2, 2025, but we can still make some educated guesses regarding what it will be about: It’s probably going to feature time-traveling egomaniac Kang, who made his debut in Loki (played by Jonathan Majors) and will be the main villain in Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, and he’s probably going to start a dynasty of some sort.

But seriously, considering we’re in the middle of what Marvel is officially calling the “Multiverse Saga” and the follow-up to Kang Dynasty is called Secret Wars (a comics event where Marvel’s entire universe was destroyed and rebooted), we’d put money on Kang Dynasty blowing up the MCU (what better way to follow-up Thanos’ snap than killing literally everyone?) and then Secret Wars finding some way to reboot it—possibly with a lot more X-Men running around than before.

Speaking of Secret Wars, it’s also coming out in 2025, but THR doesn’t say if Cretton will stick around to do both movies like the Russo brothers did with their Avengers duology.