Marvel’s newest movie Eternals packs a whole lot into its 156-minute runtime but, despite being one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s longest installments so far, this was not enough for writers Ryan and Kaz Firpo, who want to explore the past adventures of the titular team in a Disney+ series. As revealed in their first outing, the Eternals have been on Earth for thousands of years, and the scribes feel that there is plenty of interesting material to mine in serial form.
“Go back and do a Kingo episode in 1890s Mumbai where he is juggling his life as a movie star, dealing with Gandhi’s peaceful dissolution of the British empire in India. And there’s an episode with Thena where she’s in Greece. I would love to make that show. There are a lot of opportunities. If the audiences allow us, there’s going to be a story to tell with Dane Whitman. There’s going to be a story to tell in the Cosmos with the Eternals confronting Arishem and all the Celestials who are these incredible metaphors for creation. I think there’s a lot of stories in the Eternals universe.”
Until now, the idea of an Eternals prequel is something that Ryan and Kaz Firpo have only joked about, but thanks to the ongoing success of Marvel on the small screen, the project has become a much more serious prospect for them. “It’s an exciting time to be a storyteller,” Ryan Firpo said. “With Disney+, with movies, there are so many opportunities to tell these stories and so many different formats. It’s a really exciting time to just explore new frontiers in narrative.”
Directed by Academy Award winner Chlo&é Zhao, who wrote the screenplay with Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo, and Kaz Firpo, Eternals stars a star-studded ensemble cast including Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Harish Patel, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, and Angelina Jolie. The movie introduces a host of new heroes and villains to the MCU, centering on The Eternals, a race of immortal beings with superhuman powers who have secretly lived on Earth for thousands of years, reuniting to battle the evil Deviants.
Eternals has been by far the most divisive MCU movie in the decade-spanning franchise so far, ending the studios’ untouched run of Fresh movies on Rotten Tomatoes with a rotten rating of 46%. This reaction, which has no doubt come as a surprise to Marvel, could lead to the Eternals not receiving a sequel – on the big screen anyway – and could in fact open up the possibility of the damaged superhuman family being further explored on the small screen instead. Much of the criticism leveled at the movie is aimed at the pacing and exposition, both of which were products of Eternals detailing events across two time periods. Of course, both of these would be avoided in a Disney+ series that simply tells insular stories set in one timeline.
After much delay, Eternals finally premiered in Los Angeles on October 18, 2021, and was released theatrically in the United States on November 5, as part of Phase Four of the MCU. This comes to us from The Hollywood Reporter.
Source: movieweb.com