The folks over at Entertainment Weekly have unveiled the first official look at Marvel's latest one-shot, All Hail the King, with four images that confirm the short will indeed focus on Sir Ben Kingley's controversial Iron Man 3 character, The Mandari... er Trevor Slattery. While many fans were upset about The Mandarin's portrayal in last summer's Marvel blockbuster, screenwriter Drew Pearce says that All Hail the King will reveal that the fans aren't the only ones. “Imagine a real terrorist organization whose beliefs were long held and religious for thousands of years, and imagine a drunk, British actor coming along and essentially telling the world that he’s the face of your organization,” he says. “I think they would be right to be quite angry.” Much more below!
When asked what made him want to bring back Sir Ben Kingsley's character from Iron Man 3, Drew Pearce says “I had spoken to Sir Ben a lot on set because Trevor was a tricky character that everyone was involved with right from the beginning. And it was always a huge risk. I was so grateful to him when he pulled it off after a year of truly worrying about whether we could land that turn. So, 'The Further Adventures of Trevor' was something we had talked about on set all the time, and when we sat down to talk about what the short would be, it was Stephen [Broussard, executive producer of Iron Man 3] and Kevin [Feige, Marvel Studios president] and myself and Joss Whedon and Jeremy Latcham [executive producer of The Avengers.] So we kicked around a bunch of ideas and there were loads of them that we liked, and it was actually Joss who at a certain point went like, “Or you could do the one that has Sir Ben Kingsley in it because you have access to Sir Ben Kingsley.” Assuring that he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to do a Trevor short film, “No, no, no, no. There were lots of possibilities from the Iron Man 3 world. Joss that said, “You got Sir Ben” at which point we all went, “Hopefully we get Sir Ben” and then I had to go write a script that would mean Sir Ben would commit. We stayed in touch and I sent it to him. I don’t know if he’s ever, and it’s nothing to do with me, but I don’t know if he’s ever been funnier than he is as Trevor. Like, obviously he’s not as funny as Trevor when he’s Gandhi or in Schindler’s List, but what he does with Trevor is incredible.” There's much more from Drew Pearce over at Entertainment Weekly including whether All Hail the King could lead to Iron Man 4. Anyhow, the short is expected to feature with the blu-ray release of Thor: The Dark World on February 25, 2014. What do you think?