Coming off her big win as the best director of Nomadland, Chloe Zhao is ready to go with Marvel’s Eternals. According to Zhao, Marvel is completely on board and supports the Eternals’ diverse cast. If everything went according to plan, the movie would’ve been out now and being discussed, but Covid set things back with filming. Instead of coming out last November, it’s rescheduled for a November 2021 release date. Fans are still hungry for peaks of the film that was announced back in 2019.
Eternals promises to be one of the most diverse movies from the MCU. The franchise has called for better representation from people of color, women, and members of the LGBTQ community. The MCU has started the shift and Eternals will be one of the stand-out movies that have more diversity across the gate. The mix of men and women, white and POC, and the franchise’s first LGBTQ character with Brian Tyree Henry playing Phastos. To take it a step further, Lauren Ridoff will play a deaf character named Makkari.
This is certainly a shift in the typical casting that Marvel offers. However, Zhao says everyone is all in agreement with the cast. Zhao is quite exciting to get the ball rolling. She said that’s been a great experience working with Marvel. While she is leading the direction of the film, she has a great support system that allows her to do what she does best. Marvel boss Kevin Feige promises that more representation is on the way, and we’ve seen that projects, such as WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. WandaVision focused more on a female-driven plot. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier showed Sam Wilson become the new Captain America.
Not to mention, it’ll be quite exciting to see how MCU’s second female-led movie, Black Widow, performs at the box office. Additionally, the Asian community is making more strides to getting more diverse roles in Marvel’s Asian-led film, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. It’s relieving that Zhao feels comfortable in this new task and that Marvel is stepping up its game in terms of adding more diversity to the roster after all the years of scrutiny. Phase 4 is rolling out with some newness that’s needed especially after the rough year that theaters have experienced due to the pandemic. Hopefully, this will encourage more people to return to theaters and make these more like the big movie events of yesteryear.
Eternals has yet to be released, so it’s hard to determine how it’ll perform. However, the buzz has been so big that it’ll be interesting to see what happens going forward.