John Ridleyis known for his decades of work on television and movies such as12 Years a Slave,Five Days at Memorial, Barbershop,and more. Most notable for his TV chops, Ridley was at one point developing a television series with Marvel and ABC before these plans were scrapped. Ridley has always maintained his silence about the project’s details, but has revealed at last that the series would have been a “good version” of the Marvel Comics characters the Eternals.
“It’s not in the works anymore,” Ridley said of the series during an appearance on theComic Book Clubpodcast. “It was a television version of the Eternals. But good.” In Marvel’s comics, the Eternals were a race of humanlike creatures that spanned numerous planets, often rubbing shoulders with iconic Marvel characters. Instead of Ridley’s version, Marvel Studios developed the project for the big screen with the 2021 MCU filmThe Eternals,an A-list ensembledirected byChloé Zhao.Ridley expanded more on how his ideas for the Eternals differed from Zhao’s film, which was panned by critics and audiences alike:
“My version was the good version.It was so f**king weird. There was my version, a good version, which is good to me, which 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, and for all kinds of reasons.”
Ridley continued on, describing the pilot episode of his attempted show:
“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. He turns the drill on. And he puts the drill to his ear and starts pushing 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 who sleeps in the bathtub, covers himself with foil.It’s just a really weird story about these peoplewho are, I mean, it’s just weird.”
Ridley Began Developing His Series Years Ago
Ridleyfirst began working on his Marvel series, in conjunction with ABC and Disney, back in 2015. An air of mystery was continually kept around the series, as this recent interview is the first time that Ridley even revealedwhat Marvel propertyit would have been based on.
At the time of the show’s development, Marvel was creating television shows under its Marvel Television banner, with hits likeJessica JonesandDaredevil.However,Marvel Television was dissolvedinto its parent company in 2019, causing numerous shifts throughout the brand. As a result, Ridley’s series was eventually scrapped by the studio. In the end, though, Ridley told Comic Book Club that 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.”
The Eternalsis currently streaming on Disney+.
The saga of the Eternals, a race of immortal beings who lived on Earth and shaped its history and civilizations.
