Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley (12 Years a Slave) didn’t mince words when discussing his history with Marvel. Ridley was a guest on the Comic Book Club podcast, where he discussed his work on a 2015 series for Marvel and ABC. At the time, Marvel Television was producing series for both ABC (Agent Carter, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and Netflix (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage).
“It’s not in the works anymore,” Ridley said. “It was a television version of The Eternals… But good.” Ouch! Ridley continued, “My version was the good version, … It was so f***ing weird. There was my version, a good version, which is good to me, which — that doesn’t mean anything. There was the version that [Marvel] ended up doing, which I don’t think… that version was particularly good. I’ll be honest.”
Ridley’s planned series was crapped after Marvel Television merged with Marvel Studios and re-centered their efforts on series for Disney+. Instead, Marvel hired Oscar winner Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) to helm the 2021 feature film Eternals, starring Gemma Chan, Angelina Jolie, Richard Madden, and more.
While it is poor form for a screenwriter to publicly bash someone else’s film, Ridley isn’t alone. Eternals was met with mixed reviews and only grossed $402 million worldwide (which is low compared to other Marvel releases). The film, while gorgeously shot, was overstuffed: too many characters, storylines, and relationships were crammed into the film’s 2-hour and 36-minute runtime. In reality, the film would have worked better as a series instead of a standalone film.
Another issue plaguing Eternals was name recognition, as the comics series was known only to diehard Marvel fans and lacked the box office draw of an Iron Man or Spider-Man movie. Ridley noted that it was a “really hard property to develop.” He later added, “The best thing that could have happened to me was it didn’t go because … I probably wasn’t the right person for it, and I probably couldn’t make it what it needed to be.”
Ridley said his take drew mixed reviews, noting “Other really hyper-talented people, some people loved it, some people didn’t love it. Some people thought it was a great departure. Some people, I think, in retrospect would go, ‘Oh, maybe Marvel should do more departures like that.’ So it’s not whether it was good or bad. It didn’t work. It’s a really hard property. I can tell you the best thing to happen for everybody was that it didn’t happen with me, because I don’t know that it would have been entertaining … And I do mean what’s entertaining to me is often not entertaining. Populist, which is great for a lot of the work I do, but this needed to be a little bit more popular.”
Given the first film’s performance, there has been no talk about an Eternals sequel. But given the star power of some of the film’s featured players, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them in future MCU projects.
(featured image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
