At Monday night’s premiere of “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” Marvel chief Kevin Feige addressed headliner Simu Liu’s “we are not an experiment” tweet and called it “a misunderstanding.”
On Saturday, Liu responded to Disney CEO Bob Chapek’s comment in which he called the upcoming Marvel Studios film “an interesting experiment.”
Chapek confirmed during the company’s quarterly earnings call last Thursday that his studio is committed to releasing the Marvel Studios film “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” with 45 days of theatrical exclusivity, despite the surge in COVID-19 infections threatening the global box office.
“On ‘Shang-Chi,’ we think it’s going to be an interesting experiment,” Chapek said. “The prospect of taking a Marvel title to [Disney+] after just 45 days would be an interesting data point.”
“We are not an experiment,” Liu said in a tweet on Saturday morning.
“We are the underdog; the underestimated,” Liu added. “We are the ceiling-breakers. We are the celebration of culture and joy that will persevere after an embattled year. We are the surprise.”
“He is not a shy man,” Feige told the Hollywood Reporter on the red carpet. “I think in that particular tweet you can see and I think everyone does, a misunderstanding.”
Feige added: “It was not the intention. The proof is in the movie and we swing for the fences as we always do. With the amount of creative energy we put in and the budget, there’s no expense spared to bring this origin story to the screen.”