Eternals director Chloé Zhao has revealed that before she signed on to the 2021 superhero movie, it was not a big priority for Marvel Studios at the time.
“Eternals was not high on their priority list because it’s a quite unique IP and it [was] only on their list of potential players,” admitted Zhao in an interview with The Playlist. “You know, with Marvel, it’s very much a thing to find the right filmmaker before they say, ‘That’s the IP we’re gonna go for.'”
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But Eternals wasn’t Zhao’s first run-in with Marvel, as the director was once considered for Black Widow, which also hit screens in 2021. “Let me set the record straight. It doesn’t mean I had a job. I was in the running,” she said. “But it didn’t feel like the right story for me, so I pulled myself out [of contention].” Almost four years on, Zhao is in the running for the Oscar for Best Director with her 2025 adaptation Hamnet, which received eight nominations in total.