For those of you around during the Marvel Television era of the MCU, you might remember that in 2015, John Ridley (known for 12 Years a A Slave and American Crime) was brought on to Marvel Television to write and develop a "socially conscious" project for the ABC network. After a couple of years in early development, the project fizzled out and faded out of memory, especially with the pivot to Disney+ series.
This week, Ridley revealed that his dead series was to be an MCU installment of the Eternals. Although this has actually been known to insiders, I believe this is the first explicit reveal of what the project would have been.
Speaking about the project, Ridley said, "My version was the good version," Ridley said in the interview. "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."
You can read more about the project in the linked trades article here: https://deadline.com/2024/01/john-ridley-scrapped-marvel-tv-series-eternals-1235694583/
This revelation has interesting implications, as the Eternals could have been introduced into the universe in the format of a weekly television show.
