Although even before the flood of ‘real’ MCU series like ‘WandaVision’ and ‘Loki’ you couldn’t complain about a lack of Marvel series, not all planned projects actually made it to the screens. A format that Oscar-winning ’12 Years A Slave’ author John Ridley developed for the American broadcaster ABC in 2015 was one of the projects that ultimately came to nothing. Nine years later, Ridley has finally revealed what his Marvel series would have been about – and used it to take obvious swipes at a controversial MCU film.
John Ridley, who also wrote some ‘Black Panther’ comics for Marvel in 2021 and 2022, was working on a series about the immortal Eternals at the time. “My version was the right version”the writer explained – and thus shamelessly elevates them above the cinema performance with which the powerful company made their MCU debut in 2021 and which he found “not really good”.
While we at FILMSTARTS certainly enjoyed the epically told and beautifully shot Marvel blockbuster with an all-star cast, Ridley is certainly not alone in his opinion, as ‘Eternals’ is on average one of the worst-reviewed MCU films ever (at the summary collection page only 47 percent of reviews are positive).
Too weird and cheeky for television?
Would his version actually have been better received by the audience? John Ridley himself is not entirely convinced of this. In any case, he puts his own assessment of the ‘Eternals’ concept he developed into perspective, because he knows that what he finds good and entertaining is often not experienced that way by everyone. That could be one of the reasons why the project did not make progress at the time.
Perhaps it was just too awkward for ABC, given the limitations of classic network television, as Ridley described the whole thing as “damn weird.” in the relevant podcast also an extremely brutal opening scene: “The first thing you see is a young man of about 18 years old. And he’s sitting there. He sits there for a moment. And then he raises his hand. In it he is holding a drill. He turns it on and holds it to his ear. And then he pushes it in further and further…”
We will never see John Ridley’s Eternals
Despite his comments, John Ridley believes that in the end it was probably for the best that nothing came of his ‘Eternals’ adaptation – and that almost certainly nothing more will come of it. On the one hand, preference now goes to a (completely different) film version of the superhero team. On the other hand, Ridley’s series was developed under the auspices of the Marvel Television department, which was responsible for formats such as “Agents Of SHIELD” and the Netflix series such as “Daredevil”, among others.
This has now been resolved in its former form and integrated into Marvel Studios, which is responsible for film productions, which has since moved away from productions only loosely connected to the big picture and instead focused on formats closely linked to the MCU. films (including those of famous stars).