Chloé Zhao continues to make Oscar history. She became the first woman of color and the second woman ever to win Best Director, for “Nomadland,” the first woman to receive four Oscar nominations in a single year and with 2025’s “Hamnet,” she became the second woman in history to receive multiple nominations for Best Director, following Jane Campion, among several other milestones. Yet, her first and so far only foray into genre filmmaking with Marvel’s “Eternals” still fascinates.
Speaking with Awards Chatter on a recent awards podcast, Zhao discussed all things “Eternals,” a film that seemingly confused the indie, prestige community because its mythic scale was so far removed from the sensitive, intimate indies she usually made. And one of the first things she did was clear up one of the most persistent assumptions about how she ended up directing “Eternals.” And no, it wasn’t a post- “Nomadland” victory lap where the studio suddenly came calling after the awards buzz.
Zhao said the Marvel gig was something that was already in motion while she was still prepping her Oscar-winning indie road movie.
“I pitched ‘Eternals’ before I even shot ‘Nomadland,’” she said, revealing she met with Marvel and offered her take the night before she got into a van and drove to South Dakota to shoot the film. The director said she found out she landed the gig in pre-production just two days before she started filming the Academy Award-winning drama.
“So I had to start working on the [‘Eternals’] script while shooting ‘Nomadland.’ So, you know, I wasn’t very present at that time. That’s the beginning of me realizing juggling two films has its benefits but also has its problems,” she admitted.
Zhao also reminded that this wasn’t her first time circling a Marvel movie. She was previously considered for “Black Widow,” but made it clear it never meant she had turned it down. “Let me set the record straight,” she insisted. “It doesn’t mean I had a job. I was in the running,” she said. “But it didn’t feel like the right story for me, so I pulled myself out [of contention]. Plus, there was a conflict with ‘Nomadland,’ which I knew was the right story for me.”
But an interesting moment came when Zhao described Marvel’s mindset around “Eternals” itself. In her telling, the film wasn’t exactly sitting at the top of the studio’s to-do list. “Eternals was not high on their priority list,” she explained. “Because it’s a quite unique IP and it [was] only on their list of potential players.”
Zhao says that’s part of how Marvel operates in general, at least from what she experienced. “You know, with Marvel, it’s very much a thing to find the right filmmaker before they say, ‘That’s the IP we’re gonna go for.’”
And according to Zhao, Kevin Feige basically told her he trusted her for one specific reason: she wanted it and expressed a passion for it that no one else had. Zhao recalled Feige saying, “I know that no one, no one told you to make that film,” she remembered. “Literally no one in the world was interested in it or told you to do it, but you wanted to do it.”
That, Zhao says, led to the “Eternals” leap of faith. The filmmaker recalled the Marvel chief telling her why she got the job. “Okay, she has that passion, and that’s how you feel about ‘Eternal.’ So I’m going to trust that.”
So what did Zhao actually respond to in “Eternals”? She points to the first time she read the treatment producer Nate Moore handed her. “When I read that treatment, I felt like electrified because I was given a Greek play,” she said, nothing the hook as the real engine of the story, with immortal beings debating what humanity even is. “I was given a Greek play where gods get to discuss everything about human nature based on their own relationship,” she said. “So they’re biased, and they’re arguing about it.”
And while people love to talk about Marvel as a machine, Zhao says her experience still came down to a tight core group when it mattered most. Moore, she says, “Tried really hard to keep it, it’s just me, him and Kevin for the biggest changes.”
Even on set, Zhao insisted it wasn’t some endless committee situation. “It boils down to three, four people, you know, when you’re on set,” she said.
Whether you loved “Eternals,” hated it, or are still debating it years later, Zhao’s comments explain why the movie exists the way it does: a project Marvel wasn’t rushing to prioritize, until the studio found the one filmmaker who actually wanted to make it — and could convince Feige she’d fight for it.
Zhao fans should note: during the interview, she thought her follow-up to “Eternals,” she felt her adaptation of “Dracula,” not “Hamnet,” would be her next film, and she was deep into writing and development on it, so perhaps that one’s still in the cards one day.
Listen to the whole podcast conversation below.
