All the way back in 2015, we reported that Academy Award-winning writer and producer John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, American Crime) was taking on a super secret Marvel project that would be turned into a TV series. This was still early days of the MCU, and there were so many possibilities that no one really speculated as to what the project could be. But Ridley is now speaking out on what it would have been and letting fans know it was going to be awesome.
In a recent interview on the Comic Book Club podcast (via CB), Ridley finally confirmed that his secret Marvel TV project was focused around the Eternals, a group of superpowered beings who prevent the universe from being destroyed by cosmic forces. As Ridley put it, his TV adaptation would have been “the good version” of the source material, which was ultimately adapted into the 2021 film Eternals by Chloe Zhao. Ridley explained:
“It’s not in the works anymore. It was a television version of The Eternals… But good…. My version was the good version. 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.”
As for what his version would have been like, Ridley said:
“My version started with, the first thing you see is a young man, probably about 18 years old. 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.”
He went on to add:
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. 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.”
Who knows what could have been if Ridley had been able to make his version of Eternals. It sounds like it could have been something that fans might have enjoyed.
