The Marvel Cinematic Universe has its Kamala Khan. Deadline reports the studio has cast actress Iman Vellani in the title role of the upcoming Disney+ series, Ms. Marvel.
The show, which does not yet have a release date, is being written by Bisha K. Ali, and will center on the Pakistani-American Jersey girl who can stretch her body in long, powerful ways. Currently, the character can be seen at the center of the Avengers video game for PlayStation and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said after the show, Khan will play a part in the movies as well.
Vellani is relatively new to the world of Hollywood. She doesn’t even have an IMDB page. She was, however, on the Next Wave Committee at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, helping program and write about the movies playing there. So she’s not new to movies. Marvel was reportedly looking for the right actress for the role as opposed to a name and it was a long casting process.
Oh, and when the 18-year-old was asked by TIFF “Who would play you in a movie?” Vellani answered, “Iron Man... duh.” So she rules and loves Marvel.
Marvel has been hard at work prepping all its streaming shows during the covid-19 pandemic. For Ms. Marvel, it recently hired several new directors to helm episodes, which suggested this casting was imminent. Tatiana Maslany was also cast as She-Hulk for a show centered on that character, and we saw our first look at WandaVision as well. All of which means, while we haven’t had a Marvel project in a while, we’re eventually going to be overflowing with them. And we can’t wait, especially for the emergence of Kamala.
Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled Iman Vellani’s name. io9 regrets the error.
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