After dipping their toes into comic legend Jack Kirby’s big, bold, colorful, cosmic worlds in Thor: Ragnarok, Marvel is getting ready to take the full plunge. The studio has reportedly just signed Chloé Zhao to direct The Eternals, the film that will seemingly be Marvel’s most obscure and out-there project to date. Created by Kirby in 1976, the comic saw two the super-powered Eternals at war with the far more bizarre-looking Deviants over Earth’s fate. Thanos himself is an Eternal-Deviant hybrid, so Marvel’s already started priming us for this nonsense.
While the choice of Zhao fits in well with the studio’s increasing use of indie directors for these blockbuster projects, her prior experience couldn’t be further from nigh-immortal, crazy-looking space-gods. The director only has a couple very small, quiet, rural dramas under her belt—Songs My Brother Taught Me and The Rider, neither of which even used professional actors—but both have been met with near universal acclaim. It should be interesting to see what she brings to something so far outside her wheelhouse. And it should be even more interesting to see how she handles this dude:
