Chloe Zhao had a pretty eventful weekend. After a prolonged awards season, which saw the filmmaker take home dozens of awards, Zhao ended up taking home Oscar gold on Sunday. But it’s only been mere days since her multiple Academy Award wins and the filmmaker is back talking about Marvel Studios and “Eternals.”
READ MORE: Chloe Zhao Says ‘The Revenant’ Is Her ‘Eternals’ Inspiration [Interview]
Again, as we’ve seen in the past, there’s not much that Marvel Studios and Zhao are willing to say when it comes to the specifics of “Eternals,” which is the superhero team-up film that finds an immortal race of superbeings coming out of hiding to save the world. But after Zhao’s win for Best Directing at this year’s Oscars, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige is quick to point out that the “signature style” she brought to “Nomadland” is going to show up in the new superhero film.
As revealed in a new Variety interview, during the development of “Eternals,” Feige said that Zhao “was really fighting for practical locations” for the superhero film. Obviously, if you’ve seen a Marvel Cinematic Universe feature, you know that practical locations are few and far between, with sound stages and CGI wizardry replacing actual location shooting. But when he finally saw a sample reel of “Eternals” footage, he understood why the filmmaker fought so hard.
“And I had to keep saying, ‘This is right out of a camera; there’s no VFX work to this at all!’” Feige said. “Because it was a beautiful sunset, with perfect waves and mist coming up from the shore on this giant cliffside — really impressive stuff.”
And once he saw “Nomadland,” the producer realized that these sorts of shots and beautiful locations isn’t just a style she wanted for “Eternals,” but is just Zhao doing what she does best.
“Oh! That is not just what she wanted to bring to Marvel,” he said about seeing “Nomadland.” “This is a signature style.”
As for how Zhao was able to keep her “style” while directing, Marvel didn’t just have to let her shoot on location. The filmmaker also wanted to make sure her sets still had a more intimate feeling versus the typical “army” that is seen during typical Marvel productions.
“Props to Marvel — from early on, they knew the way I wanted to make this film, how I wanted to shoot,” she explained. “It can’t be hundreds of people standing around. So they very much adapted how to run the set the way that I wanted to work. I’m still surrounded by 25 people. They just have armies, and each of them knew they needed to keep the army away.”
Of all the new films and TV series coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe over the next couple of years, “Eternals” is the one that seems to be the biggest question mark. Obviously, Chloe Zhao is an incredible, Oscar-winning filmmaker, but after two dozen films, it’s hard to imagine Marvel Studios going too far out of the box for her film. We’ll just have to see what it’s like on November 5, when “Eternals” arrives in theaters.