Ben Kingsley’s Mandarin returns in the next Marvel One-Shot ‘All Hail the King’

A few months ago rumors hit the web that Ben Kingsley would be returning as Trevor Slattery Aka The Mandarin in an upcoming Marvel One-Shot. Then several weeks ago, it was revealed (thanks to the listing of Thor: The Dark World bonus features) that the upcoming short would be titled ‘ All Hail the King’ and immediately fans began to speculate who this film was about.

Some rumors stated it was to further develop the ending of Thor: The Dark World and would feature Loki, while many went right back to that initial report and believed it was about The Mandarin. Now thanks to EW, we know which rumors were true.

Along with the official reveal, fans were treated to 4 stills from the upcoming 14min long short film (seen below), and an exclusive interview with Drew Pearce about the film.

Excerpts from the interview below (check out the full interview at EW)

How does this fit in to the entire Marvel mythology? In the feature film, we learn that Kingsley’s version of The Mandarin is a front set up by Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), but here he is surprised to learn there are people out there who still believe in the figure he was impersonating.

What it’s doing on that level is, it reiterates a bunch of stuff that actually Shane [Black, director and co-writer of Iron Man 3] and I said in our interviews around the movie. There’s lots of exposition in lots of different cuts of Iron Man 3 that, in the end, kind of got snubbed out. It’s kind of said in Iron Man 3 but very briefly, Aldrich essentially took a thing that was real, historically real and culturally real, and co-opted it for his own means — essentially co-opting an ancient terrorist concept. What [All Hail the King] does is show that everything in Iron Man 1 [involving the terrorist group] was canon all along any way. We kind of knew The Ten Rings were a real terrorist cell.

I know All Hail the King is a post-script to Iron Man 3, but I have to say it also feels like a setup for Iron Man 4— if there is one someday.

Oh, it couldn’t possibly. [Laughs.] I think short movies in general, whether they’re Marvel ones or not, you kind of want them to feel like they’re opening you up to a bigger world. Yeah, I definitely think there are – the non-spoiler way for me to say it — by the end of the short, there are definitely a lot of exciting other places that are brought up in it that could then go in the Marvel universe. You know, whether that’s an Iron Man movie or another one going into Phase Two or Three.

You see the Captain America/anarchy symbol on his neck again in this short. Will we eventually learn what that means?

It’s another one of Killian’s co-opting concepts. I think the whole of Iron Man 3 is about symbols and fake faces we’re creating around demons and what are heroes, you know so the idea of a cross between the Captain American shield and an anarchy sign felt exactly like what Killian’s think tank would put together as an incendiary tattoo that the Mandarin would have. But I like the fact that Trevor really has got all the tattoos on him as well. That was part of it.

Marvel One-Shot: ‘All Hail the King’ will be released alongside Thor: The Dark World on February 25, 2014.