Hollywood’s Marvellous idea: First Muslim Superhero

Following in the footsteps of Marvel’s Scarlet Witch, Ms. Marvel will be the second female superhero to get a series of her own on Disney’s new streaming OTT, Disney Plus.

The announcement was made by Marvel’s ‘Big Cheese’ Kevin Feige at the Disney’s ultimate fan event D23 Expo. In a surprise announcement, Kevin said his studio is developing ‘Ms. Marvel’ with Kamala Khan, the first Muslim Pakistani-American superhero, who will spearhead her own solo Marvel project.

“You will meet her in her Disney+ series and then you will see her in our films. It is incredibly exciting for us,” said Kevin.

Earlier this year, Kevin has announced in a BBC interview that the first Muslim superhero from their comic book was to make it to the movies.

Kevin had then confirmed that a film about Muslim superhero Ms. Marvel is “definitely sort of in the works”. He also said that the studio has plans for that once they’d introduced Captain Marvel to the world.

The Ms. Marvel series will be helmed by Bisha K. Ali, and will revolve around a teenager named Kamala Khan, a Pakistani-American resident of New Jersey, with the ability to stretch and change shape. Kamala Khan, who’s the fourth character to be named Ms. Marvel, was given her own Ms. Marvel comic book series by Sana Amanat, G. Willow Wilson, and Adrian Alphona back in 2013-14.

Interestingly, Priyanka Chopra’s name had come up as the frontrunner for the job based on audience choices after her stint as Alex Parrish in the American drama-thriller series Quantico. But after the backlash the actress received for her recent “Jai Hind” comment in reference to the abolishing of Article 370, we hear irate fans across Pakistan are throwing up other choices for doing the voice over for the character of Kamala Khan, such as Sophia Taylor Ali, Sair Khan and Afshan Azad.