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Tag: eternals

  • How Marvel’s Huge Budget for ‘Eternals’ Actually Worked Against It

    Chloé Zhao is currently promoting her follow-up to Marvel Studios’ Eternals, an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet. The 2020 book is based on William Shakespeare and his wife as they grieve the loss of one of their children, which would go on to inspire Hamlet. It makes sense that after making a movie where the Academy Award-winning director’s voice felt pulled in many directions, a more intimate movie would be her next choice. 

    In an interview with Vanity Fair, Zhao talked about how her experience on Eternals informed her approach to Hamnet. The filmmaker also said working with a Disney budget on a Marvel property really pushed her range.

    “Eternals prepared me for Hamnet because it’s world-building. Before that, I had only done films that existed in the real world. I also learned what to do and not to do—what’s realistic and what isn’t,” she said of the mixed reception she got on her Marvel movie, which shone in the moments Zhao’s visionary storytelling was on full display in sweeping visuals and powerful moments between the family of Gods.

    But having such a big studio production surrounding her wasn’t the freeing experience you might expect. “Eternals had, like, an unlimited amount of money and resources … Eternals didn’t have a lot of limitations, and that is actually quite dangerous,” Zhao reflected. In the smaller-scaled Hamnet, “suddenly everything has meaning.”

    The lead-up to the film’s release, as superhero-fatigued fans were getting uncertain about the more esoteric characters within the MCU, made it abundantly clear as an audience that Marvel Studios was beginning to let the expectations of what worked before inform what was put into the film along with what Zhao hoped to make. In the wake of the divisive discourse of what comic book movie fans thought about Eternals, plans for the sequel and its ensemble’s presence in team-up films were quietly scrapped.

    Thankfully for Hamnet, Zhao had Steven Spielberg and Sam Mendes on her side. “Their feedback was very filmmaker-driven because they’re both incredible filmmakers, so when they gave me notes, they were already infused with what they knew was my style,” she shared of staying true to her choices while the Marvel film tried to do it all. “Even when I did things that probably were confusing or didn’t make sense to people, they would say, ‘You know what? We trust her. Let her do her thing.’”

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

    Sabina Graves

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  • Kumail Nanjiani Reveals His ‘Eternals’ Future That Could’ve Been

    It’s no secret the MCU entered the 2020s with some growing pains. A pandemic will do that to you, ditto a spottier output, and one of the more divisive projects was Eternals. At the time, it seemed Marvel had some plans for the immortal beings, and thanks to Kumail Nanjiani, we now know what that would’ve looked like.

    In a recent episode of Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out podcast, the one-time Kingo revealed he signed on thinking he’d be a longterm MCU player and alternate between that and non-blockbuster work. According to him, Marvel Studios had him sign up “for all this stuff. I signed on for six movies, a video game, [and] a theme park ride. I was like, ‘This is gonna be my job for the next 10 years.’” Those plans, which likely also applied to costars like Angelina Jolie and Brian Tyree Henry (and is probably standard across all MCU actors), appear to have fallen through, since the Eternals have been MIA for nearly four years and Marvel’s not said much about them since. And the only other time they’ve been brought up was a season three episode of What If…? that saw Nanjiani voice an alternate version of Kingo.

    Breaking down the different parts of Nanjiani’s statement, his mention of six films likely applies to at least two Eternals sequels and three guest appearances in other characters’ movies. The theme park ride probably relates to his likeness, and the video game is a little trickier to determine. Nanjiani’s done voice work for video games before, so it could be he would’ve played Kingo across one of Marvel’s mobile titles like Strike Force, or even Fortnite, since both have seen Ryan Reynolds reprise his role as Deadpool. (Hell, if you wanna really get out there, maybe they thought he’d be such a fan-favorite to land a spot in Marvel Rivals.)

    Regardless, Nanjiani still has pride in Eternals, even while acknowledging its “really bad reviews” affected him so much he went to therapy, where he realized “too much of my self-esteem was tied up in other people’s reaction to my work.” Given Marvel’s recent moves in the past year, though, maybe the studio will bring Kingo and his fellow Eternals back for something in the next few years.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

    Justin Carter

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  • ‘Eternals’ Actor Kumail Nanjiani Says His Mental Health Was Affected After Negative Reviews For Marvel Film: “I Still Talk To My Therapist About That”

    ‘Eternals’ Actor Kumail Nanjiani Says His Mental Health Was Affected After Negative Reviews For Marvel Film: “I Still Talk To My Therapist About That”


    Kumail Nanjiani is recalling the release of Marvel‘s Eternals and revealing he had to go to counseling following the negative reviews the Chloé Zhao film received.

    “I had the best time doing that movie, and I realized this is how work should feel like,” Nanjiani said during an appearance on the Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum podcast. “However, when that movie came out and the reviews weren’t good, that was very, very tough for me and I realized that too much of how I’m evaluating what I want to do is based on the result of what other people think of it.”

    Eternals was released in 2021, and it starred Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Kit Harington, among others. The film currently has a 47% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

    “It was really, really hard because Marvel thought that movie was going to be really, really well reviewed, and so they lifted the embargo really early and they also put it in some fancy movie festivals and they sent us on a big global tour promoting the movie right as the embargo lifted,” he added.

    “So we had to travel the world while they thought we’d be going on a wave of raves and it wasn’t true. The reviews were really bad,” Nanjiani said.

    The actor said that he read many reviews, and it ended up affecting his mental health, adding, “I think there was some weird soup in the atmosphere for why that movie got slammed so much, and I think not much of it has to do with the actual quality of the movie. It was really hard, and that was when I thought it was unfair to me and unfair to [my wife] Emily, and I can’t approach my work this way anymore. Some s**t has to change, so I started counseling. I still talk to my therapist about that.”



    Armando Tinoco

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  • John Ridley Says Scrapped Marvel TV Series Was About the Eternals: “A Good Version”

    John Ridley Says Scrapped Marvel TV Series Was About the Eternals: “A Good Version”

    John Ridley revealed that his scrapped Marvel project from nearly a decade ago was actually based on the Eternals.

    The Oscar winner said during a recent appearance on the Comic Book Club podcast that while the TV series he was developing at ABC in 2015 is “not in the works anymore,” it was a “television version of The Eternals, but good.”

    “My version or the good version was so fucking weird,” Ridley recalled. “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.”

    A few years later, Marvel Studios produced the film Eternals in 2021, directed by Chloé Zhao and featured a star-studded cast including Angelina Jolie, Gemma Chan, Kumail Nanjiani, Salma Hayek, Gemma Chan, Kit Harington and Richard Madden. The movie followed the Eternals, immortal beings who lived on Earth and protected it from the less-evolved Deviants.

    Ridley, who won an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay for 12 Years a Slave, proceeded to detail the pilot episode of his series, saying, “My version started with, the first thing you see is a young man, probably about 17, 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. 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 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.”

    But the writer-director admitted his version was a “really hard property [to develop].” He later realized 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 [for all].”

    Ridley added, “I do mean what’s entertaining to me is often not populist, which is great for a lot of the work I do, but this needed to be a little bit more popular, it really did.”

    During the time that Ridley’s series was in development, Marvel Television was producing other shows such as Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter and Jessica Jones. But Marvel TV was later combined with Marvel Studios, with several shows, including the Eternals series, being scrapped.

    Carly Thomas

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  • Who In The Game Of Thrones Universe Uses Weed

    Who In The Game Of Thrones Universe Uses Weed

    Game of Thrones is a juggernaut in the entertainment world – and has a huge cast…but how many of them chill out

    For at home entertainment, Game Of Thrones (GOT) is rare, it still commands a huge audience 3 years after its finale. Law and Order and a few others can claim such status, but it less than 1% of shows who become culturally huge. It’s consistently ranked high in engagement since it concluded and House of the Dragon,” a prequel series, is pacing ahead of Amazon’s “The Rings of Power” in demand.  But who in the Game of Thrones universe uses weed?

    The Game of Thrones universe can be stressful. You have to contend with everyone possibly trying to stab you in the back (literally), dragons, White Walkers, cult religions, murderous barbarians, incest, and every wedding you attend ending in murder. House of the Dragon is no easy picnic either.  Fans are eager for the start of season two of Dragon.

    The grand dame of GOT, Diana Ring, was a lifelong smoker of cigarettes to the end, but we have been unable to verify if she was a fan of cannabis.  Peter Dinklage is a big wine buff, but no signs of an edible.

    Related: Rainy Weather Cocktails

    Playing characters on HBO’s GOT can be tense, which is why Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams incidentally became friends on the show. To detox from long days being Sansa and Arya Stark, the actresses would wind down like the rest of us—smoking some weed and acting silly.

    “We’re kind of like loners on Game of Thrones, just because the past few seasons Maisie and I have sleepovers every night when we’re shooting. Or every night whenever both of us are in town. We just used to sit there and eat and watch stupid videos and smoke weed,” Turner said “I don’t know if my publicist will kill me for saying this. We’d get high and then we’d sit in the bath together and we’d rub makeup brushes on our faces. It’s fun.”

    RELATED: People Who Use Weed Also Do More Of Another Fun Thing

    One big fan is Australian actress Milly Alcock. Have been spotted consuming, she stars in House of the Dragon.  She made a name for herself in the comedy/drama Upright and has been in a variety of vehicles including a music vehicle.

    GOT Richard Madden has since starred as Ikaris in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film Eternals (2021) and as a spy in the action thriller series Citadel (2023-present). He mingles marijuana in with all his gigs on screen.

    Emilia Clarke excited fans with a brief backstage appearance with Snoop Dogg, but we don’t know if he gifted her any of his products.

    RELATED: People Who Use Weed Also Do More Of Another Fun Thing

    Actress Lena Headey has shared her personal experience with anxiety, maybe some gummies could help her on a regular basis.

    As House of Dragons starts their second season, there is bound to be another spin off, more cast members and many more fan of marijuana.

    Anthony Washington

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  • Diablo 4’s Next Season Looks Pretty Gruesome In New Trailer

    Diablo 4’s Next Season Looks Pretty Gruesome In New Trailer

    Screenshot: Blizzard / Kotaku

    During Gamescom’s Opening Night Live presentation, Blizzard took to the stage alongside host Geoff Keighley to announce that Diablo IV’s next update, Season of Blood, will start on October 17—just in time for Halloween.

    Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build

    Much like Diablo IV’s current update, Season of the Malignant, Season 2 will introduce five new and returning endgame bosses, and will also come with changes to renown rewards, gem and stash storage, and resistance and status effects. While the studio didn’t divulge details on what those updates will be just yet, Blizzard came through with a new trailer showing off what to expect come this October.

    Diablo

    Read More: There Are Officially Too Many Video Games Launching In October 2023

    If you thought that looked kinda gruesome, well, I’m right there with you. With vampire hunter Erys at your side, it’ll be up to the two of you to put an end to a new threat roaming the lands of Sanctuary. Erys is voiced by Gemma Chan, who you might recognize from Captain Marvel (Minn-Erva), Raya and the Last Dragon (Namaari), Crazy Rich Asians (Astrid), and Eternals (Sersi), among other films and TV shows. Revealing that this is her first video game performance, Chan, alongside Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson, briefly talked about the “badass warrior companion” Erys, some “cool vampiric powers” at your disposal, and a “big bad vampire lord” you’ll face at Season of Blood’s end.

    Read More: Diablo IV Is About To Make Loot Way Better For New Characters

    But that’s not until October 17. For now, Season of the Malignant is still going on, and unfortunately, things haven’t been going well. After a controversial change to player power level, the studio addressed the community by promising to not make classes weaker, which Blizzard is aware leads to a “not fun” experience overall. Here’s hoping things go better with Season of Blood.

     

    Levi Winslow

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  • The Worst Unconventional Superhero Movies

    The Worst Unconventional Superhero Movies

    When it comes to the superhero genre, there’s certain things that we have come to expect. For starters, we know there will be someone — or something — that puts on a costume and becomes a vigilante. There’s also the understanding that there will be a good deal of action, whether that be in the form of crime-fighting or super-on-super battles. Typically, there’s also a villain, who is at odds with our superhero protagonist and oftentimes the rest of the world. Plot developments happen rather quickly, sometimes at the sake of character development. Audiences cheer, gasp, and laugh at the heroes’ quippy one-liners. This is the experience of watching a superhero movie.

    However, this isn’t always the case. In fact, there are a handful of superhero movies that eschew these stereotypes in favor of something … well, different. Instead of a superhero that defies gravity, these superheroes defy convention. While this concept sounds intriguing — and has indeed led to some great entries in the superhero canon — there are quite a few unconventional superhero movies that completely miss the mark.

    READ MORE: The Worst Marvel Villains Ever

    You see, genre cliches exist for a reason. That’s not to say that every single Marvel and DC movie should follow a cookie cutter mold, but incorporating formulaic elements into a movie can go a long way in creating a satisfying experience for moviegoers. It’s like your favorite pizza from your go-to delivery place — it might not always be particularly exciting, but it’s consistent, and it makes you feel good.

    Without further ado, let’s look at ten outside-the-box superhero movies that just flat out didn’t work.

    Unconventional Superhero Movies That Totally Missed The Mark

    Superhero Scenes That Could Never Get Made Today

    These scenes and characters from famous comic-book movies would not fly in the modern world.

    Claire Epting

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