Kevin Feige Comments on Exploring the Eternals

When Avengers 4 comes out next year it will mark the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it and open the door for new stories and new parts of Marvel's rich history to come to life on the big screen. While there's been no official announcement of what any of the post-Avengers 4 films will be, a movie based on The Eternals has been heavily rumored to on that slate and now, Kevin Feige is opening up about exploring those characters and their potential.

In an interview with Screen Rant, the Marvel Studios head said that there was a lot to explore with the Eternals, including ancient myths and legends.

"Well, one of the cool things about that property and what Jack Kirby did with it and what's been done with it in recent years is it does tie into they're called Eternals, they've been around for a long time. You know?" Feige said. "There's this notion of all of these myths and legends that we know from ancient times, were they inspired by the Eternals? Kevin Feige: Were they Eternals? It's a very ... you know, it's an ancient aliens kind of sci-fi trope that we think would be fun to explore someday."

For those unfamiliar, The Eternals were created by the King of Comics Jack Kirby back in 1976 as a group of god-like beings who have been part of the universe for a very long time, having been created when cosmic beings known as the Celestials genetically experimented on humans, creating the super-powered beings with near immortality. While the Eternals are basically an unknown quantity except to die-hard Marvel fans, exploring the group within an "ancient aliens" type of trope like Feige described would make for an interesting story that would also have audience appeal for audiences who have never been exposed to the Eternals before.

It's -- meaning the introduction of unfamiliar and challenging character concepts -- also something that Marvel Studios has had success with before. Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, and Doctor Strange are all examples of stories that weren't exactly mainstream before those movies premiered. Now, it'd be hard to imagine the MCU without those characters and their impact. Just take Groot and Rocket from Guardians, who went from relatively obscure to non-Marvel fans to household names complete with memes on Twitter.

Even with The Eternals years away -- Feige recently revealed they're working on movie plans for as far out as 2025 -- the framework is already starting to come together. In Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos is greeted as "Thanos, son of A'lars" when he goes to collect the Soul Stone. A'lars is the real name for the character more commonly known as Mentor -- one of the Eternals.

Avengers: Infinity War is in theaters now. Other upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe films are Ant-Man and the Wasp on July 6, Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019, the fourth Avengers movie on May 3, 2019, Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5, 2019, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in 2020.

What would you like to see in an Eternals movie? Let us know in the comments below.