We’re still several movies away from the end of Phase Three, but the folks at Marvel Studios are already planning ahead and working on films to fill up Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Once Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers 4 bring the story up until now to a close, the next Phase of the franchise is free to introduce some fresh properties, and one of those being considered is a pic based on Jack Kirby’s Eternals.
This is far from the first time we’re hearing of it, of course, but in a recent interview, Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige confirmed to The Wrap that an Eternals film is definitely on the cards. However, the producer did play down its importance somewhat, stating that it’s just one of “many, many, many” ideas that his team are considering moving forward on, but only if they “believe in them enough.”
“‘Eternals’ is one of many many many things that we are actively beginning to have creative discussions about to see if we believe in them enough to put them on a slate.”
For those who don’t know, the Eternals are a race of god-like humanoids descended from primitive humans who were experimented on by the Celestials. Their mutated counterparts are known as the Deviants. It would be fairly natural to introduce the species in Phase Four, too, as the concept of the Celestials has already been seen in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. Not only that, but in the comics, Thanos is actually a Deviant, cast out by the Eternals of Titan due to his disfigured appearance.
Feige went on to clarify that “we’ve started working on what are the films post-phase 3,” but apparently, this planning is only in the earliest stages, as most of the focus is understandably on the upcoming five projects already fixed in the slate. Specifically, the two Avengers movies, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Captain Marvel and Spider-Man: Homecoming 2. Curiously, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, due for 2020, was not mentioned.
Feige explained:
“Those are the five things that are taking up 90 percent of our time. But there’s 10 percent we’re starting to go, ‘What’s going to be best?’ And some of that is you can take cues from everything we’ve done in the 22 movies before those — which is sequels to existing characters, new interpretation of existing characters and trying whole new swings with stuff that most people never heard of. So there are writers coming in on lots of different projects and lots of different ideas. And you’ll only start to hear more and more of it.”
Eternals would probably fall under the “stuff that most people never heard of” banner, much like Guardians of the Galaxy once did. Like we said above, however, there is a good foundation for the property already set up in the MCU, so a solo movie for them could well be a smart idea. I guess we’ll just have to see how this one plays out.