It’s safe to say that Chloe Zhao‘s “Eternals” was not the massive critical success Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios expected it to be. But would an “Eternals” TV show fared any better? Screenwriter and TV director John Ridley thinks so. Deadline reports that Ridley talked about his TV series based on Jack Kirby‘s ultra-weird comic when he stopped by the “Comics Books Club” podcast. And according to him, his version was “the good version.”
If that’s the case, too bad it will never make it to the small screen. “It’s not in the works anymore,” Ridley told the podcast hosts. “It was a television version of “The Eternals”… But good.” Ridley had the series in development at ABC back in 2015 when Marvel Television had several shows airing, like “Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” “Netflix’s Daredevil,” “Jessica Jones,” “Luke Cage,” and “Iron Fist.” But after Marvel Studios incorporated Marvel Television into its group, Ridley had to abandon the project.
But Ridley claims his version of Kirby’s characters would have been superior to Zhao’s. “My version was the good version,” he continued. “It was so f*cking 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.” Zhao’s 2021 film featured an ensemble cast that included Gemma Chan, Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Kumail Nanjiani, Kit Harrington, Barry Keoghan, and more. But all of that star power couldn’t win over critics. “Eternals” was an all-around dud, and the first MCU film to receive a rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Based on Ridley’s description of his version, his vision was a lot more …transgressive. “My version started with, the first thing you see is a young man, probably about 18 years old,” the filmmaker said about his pilot. “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. And then it goes from there. That’s the start, right? That’s how it starts. And then I think you see… another kid… He sleeps in the bathtub, covers himself with foil. It’s just a really weird story about these people who are, I mean, it’s just weird.”
But producers at ABC and Marvel Television didn’t want weird. Ridley said his “Eternals” was a “really hard property to develop,” with his ideas receiving mixed reviews from higher-ups. “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,” he continued. “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.”
And “The Eternals” is already one of those comic books that’s “out there,” even for diehard Marvel fans. Still, it sounds like Ridley’s ideas for his series were too intense for TV. Would his show have fared better than Zhao’s films? It’s fun to speculate about, but MCU fans will never know.