Six years before the movie, Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley worked on a “good” yet “weird” Eternals series for Marvel TV.
In the distant, faraway year of 2015, it was revealed that 12 Years A Slave screenwriter John Ridley was working on a superhero series for Marvel Television – a project that, at the time, was shrouded in secrecy.
Almost a decade on, Ridley has finally talked about what that project was – a small-screen take on Eternals. (Frustratingly, we already spoiled this bit of the news story in the headline – sorry.)
That project never happened, and instead we ended up with the 2021 Eternals movie, co-written directed by Chloé Zhao.
Talking to the Comic Book Club podcast (and spotted by The Hollywood Reporter), Ridley talked about his scrapped take on the Eternals, describing it as “the good version” of the saga originally created by Jack Kirby in 1976. He also added that his Eternals “was so fucking weird.”
“There was the version that [Marvel] ended up doing,” Ridley added, “[and] I don’t think that version was particularly good. I’ll be honest.”
Elaborating slightly on his story’s weirdness, Ridley later described the series’ opening scene.
“…the first thing you see is a young man, probably about 17, 18 years old,” Ridley said. “And he’s sitting there. He’s sitting there for a moment. And then he lifts his hands. He has a drill in it. And he turns the drill on. And he puts the drill to his ear. And he starts pushing it in […] That’s how it starts. And then I think you see another kid. He sleeps in the bathtub, covers himself with foil.”
That does indeed sound quite unusual, and Ridley concedes that, “What’s entertaining to me is often not populist, which is great for a lot of work I do, but this needed to be a little bit more popular, it really did.”
The Eternals series was in development as Marvel Television, in collaboration with ABC Studios, was putting out a string of shows based on its comics, including Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and many more besides. By 2019, however, Marvel Television was folded into Marvel Studios, and numerous shows either airing or in development were cancelled.
Elements of the old Marvel TV epoch still remain, though; Charlie Cox is set to reprise his role as the title character in Daredevil: Born Again this year, while Vincent D’Onofrio will return as the villainous Kingpin in the upcoming Disney+ show, Echo. Given the somewhat mixed response to the 2021 Eternals movie, maybe Marvel will one day return to the idea of adapting it into a TV show.
