Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is coming to theaters two weeks from Friday, but there’s already a lurching feeling that it’s not going to perform to the standards expected of the Marvel Cinematic Universe at the box office. Early projections have it tracking for the franchise’s lowest opening weekend ever, with a lot of fans not sold on the idea of heading to their local theater when the Delta variant is causing so much concern.
One way to try and stem the tide would be to publicly announce that the near-mythical first trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home would be coming attached to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, but it looks as though audiences will be greeted with an extended promo for Chloe Zhao’s Eternals instead, which isn’t a bad thing by any means.
It’s been almost three months since we saw the teaser, which generated plenty of buzz online, but the marketing and promotional campaign almost instantly went back into hibernation right after that. A new report claims that a second Eternals trailer will come packing up to 45 seconds of brand new footage, and you can check out what it might contain below.
They showed Makkari using her powers, and during the sequence with the storm, they showed more fight scenes and wider shots of stuff they had previously gone closer on, like when they show up to Druig’s cabin. I would say there was probably about 30-45 seconds of new footage for the Eternals in the trailer I saw today.”
The theatrical industry is still struggling to recover after eighteen months in the doldrums, which isn’t great news when the MCU is releasing two mega budget blockbusters starring brand new characters in the space of nine weeks. Hopefully the circumstances don’t affect either Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings or Eternals‘ chances of getting sequels, because the shared mythology can’t keep relying on the same core cast of superheroes in perpetuity forever, especially with the Disney Plus expansion now firmly underway.
