When they made the announcement of a live-action Mulan, Disney revealed they were conducting a world-wide search for an Asian actor to play the lead role. However a post on Angry Asian Male yesterday sparked some controversy that the studio were looking to white-wash the role of Shang. The claim comes from the original spec-script which describes the love-interest as a, “30-something European trader who initially cares only for the pleasure of women and money” and adds, “our white savior has come to the aid of Ancient China due to a classic case of Yellow Fever.”
Ming-Na Wen, who voiced Mulan in the animated movie and was upset about the white-wash casting of Ghost in the Shell, shared her own dismay on Twitter yesterday. “So many outraged fans have tweeted me about this,” she said on Twitter. “It’s upsetting & wrong. Hoping it’s NOT true.”
However sources close to the movie told Vulture that these claims are not true.
“The spec script was a jumping-off point for a new take on the story that draws from both the literary ballad of Mulan and Disney’s 1998 animated film,” the source says. “Mulan is and will always be the lead character in the story, and all primary roles, including the love interest, are Chinese.”
The Mulan spec-script is currently being re-written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes).
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Mulan is set to hit cinemas on November 2nd 2018
Originally published October 12, 2016. Updated April 16, 2018.
