Shang-Chi producer explains why Abomination was brought back, and confirms Tim Roth returned

Abomination in The Incredible Hulk
(Image credit: Disney/Marvel)

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings producer Jonathan Schwartz has talked about bringing Tim Roth's Abomination back for the movie.

A trailer for the movie revealed that Abomination and Benedict Wong's Doctor Strange character Wong would be fighting each other in a cage match of some kind, and Schwartz explained the reasoning behind using this particular The Incredible Hulk character.

"We love that moment. We sort of knew, [director] Destin [Daniel Cretton] and I, that there had to be a big, kind of showcasing fight between two known characters in there, and it just became this big talk with us in talking about who made sense, and who'd be cool, and who we would think it would be a good fight between, and we ended up with wanting Abomination because it seemed to make the most story sense for where we're going to find him in this universe, and also, just be a cool, awesome fight," he told ComicBook.com.

"And it fell along those lines, like it was a good time to refresh Abomination's look," he continued. "We haven't seen him for a while, so I think everyone was excited to kind of see him at all in weird glory."

Schwartz also confirmed to The Direct that Roth returned to voice his character: "Roth did some vocalization for us... he certainly was part of that process."

We'll next see Abomination in the She-Hulk Disney Plus series, which is due to debut in 2022. He'll appear alongside Tatiana Maslany's titular Jennifer Walters, Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner, and Jameela Jamil as the villain Titania.

Shang-Chi releases this September 3. Until then, check out our guide to Marvel Phase 4 to see everything else the MCU has in store for us.

Molly Edwards
Senior Entertainment Writer

I'm a Senior Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering all things film and TV for the site's Total Film and SFX sections. I previously worked on the Disney magazines team at Immediate Media, and also wrote on the CBeebies, MEGA!, and Star Wars Galaxy titles after graduating with a BA in English.