“Iron Man 3” Now a Chinese Co-Production! Is The Mandarin Far Behind?

This is some interesting news over at Deadline Hollywood. It was announced today, that The Walt Disney Company China, Marvel Studios and DMG Entertainment announced that Iron Man 3 will be co-produced in China.

This is evidence of a relaxing Chinese foreign film quota and a recent increase in Chinese capital being invested into Hollywood and Silicon Valley entertainment companies.  As part of the deal, and in order to receive a portion of the government fund, some of Iron Man 3 has to be filmed in China using local talent.

So of course the question has to be asked: Is The Mandarin going to finally be an Iron Man movie villain? In interviews, director Shane Black has denied having the Asian Mandarin character show up (and he was in Predator so why would we doubt him) but could things have changed? After Iron Man 1, I thought that The Mandarin would be represented in the Marvel movie universe solely as a terrorist organization but could it be represented as one man? Let’s just hope that they keep out the racist stereotypes. Or at least the pigeon English.