Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley has revealed that his canceled Marvel television series would have been based on the Eternals comics.
During an appearance on the Comic Book Club podcast (via Deadline), Ridley opened up about the Marvel TV series he began developing at ABC in 2015. “It’s not in the works anymore,” Ridley said. “It was a television version of The Eternals … But good.”
The writer elaborated, “My version was the good version … It was so f***ing 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.”
Ridley refers to Marvel Studios‘ eventual feature film adaptation of Eternals. Directed and co-written by Chloé Zhao — an Oscar winner in her own right — the ambitious superhero film opened in November 2021 to mixed reception from critics and audiences. It ultimately grossed $402.1 million worldwide against a budget of $236.2 million.
Ridley’s Eternals TV series, meanwhile, was permanently shelved when Marvel Television closed its doors in 2019. It was at that point that Marvel Studios began producing its own small-screen projects for Disney+. In the days before Disney+, Marvel Television produced various Marvel Cinematic Universe-adjacent shows for a number of networks and streamers. ABC, in particular, was home to such series as Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, and Inhumans.
What would John Ridley’s Eternals have looked like?
Elsewhere in the Comic Book Club interview, Ridley opened up a bit regarding the actual content of his scrapped Eternals show. “My version started with, the first thing you see is a young man, probably about 18 years old,” he said “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.”
However, Ridley admitted that — much like how critics and audiences were torn on the Eternals movie — his small-screen take didn’t win over everyone at Marvel. He called Eternals a “really hard property to develop.” In the end, he believes “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.” Ridley concluded, “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.”
Ridley is perhaps best known for writing the Steve McQueen-directed biopic 12 Years a Slave, which released in theaters in 2013. The film earned Ridley the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 86th Academy Awards. Though his Eternals TV series was never made, Ridley did go on to pen a 15-issue Black Panther run for Marvel Comics from 2021 to 2023.
Marvel Studios’ Eternals is currently streaming on Disney+.
