Debutante Canada-based actor Iman Vellani has been chosen to play the titular role of Ms Marvel in Marvel’s Disney Plus series.
Ms. Marvel, 16-year-old Kamala Khan, is a New-Jersey based Pakistani-American teen and is MCU’s first Muslim superhero. Ms Marvel has powers such as superhuman speed and strength, healing abilities, bioluminescence, morphogenic abilities and polymorphing abilities, according to Marvel.
The announcement comes right on the heels of the series’ announcement that Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (who directed Bad Boys For Life), Meera Menon (director of Farah Goes Bang and Equity) and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (director of A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness – that won the Academy award for Best Documentary (short subject) in 2016) have been roped in as filmmakers for the upcoming Ms. Marvel. The project will be created and written by Bisha K Ali who has worked on Four Weddings and a Funeral.
The film is slated to release in 2022 alongside other Marvel releases, including- Hawkeye, Moon Knight, and She-Hulk.
The character was first introduced in 2013 in a Captain Marvel comic issue before being launched as an independent series the following year. The plot in the comic series revolves around the tug-of-war between Kamala Khan’s religious beliefs at home and teenage inseurities at school and how a superhuman intervention assists in her character building apart from the larger good of saving Jersey city.
The original creators- Sana Amanat, Adrian Alphona, Jamie McKelvie, and G. Willow Wilson- have not commented on the plot of the movie.
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The reveal garnered social media attention after Pakistani-American actor Kumail Nanjiani tweeted on Thursday: “I just saw they cast Ms. Marvel and legit got teary eyed. Congratulations Iman Vellani! Your work is going to mean so much to so many people, myself included. I can’t wait.”
Some of the upcoming Marvel releases consist of- Wanda Vision (December), The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021), and Loki (2021).