Marvel Moving Ahead With ‘Eternals’ Movie, Hires Writers

It looks like Marvel Studios is moving forward quickly with their Phase 4 plans as Kevin Feige has tapped writers to helm their latest adventure in the MCU’s cosmos.

According to a new report from The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel hired screenwriters to chart the first big-screen adventures for the heavily rumored movie based on The Eternals. Matthew and Ryan Firpo have been hired to pen the movie, after their spec script Ruin shot to the top of the 2017 Black List.

There’s no word yet on when the movie is planned to be released in theaters, though it will likely come after Marvel Studios releases the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.

This new movie will introduce another team of superheroes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and could help set the stage for the future of the franchise. It’s likely that the untitled sequel to Avengers: Infinity War will be the end of an era, while the Eternals could serve as the new flagship should the first film prove successful.

The Eternals were created by the King of Comics Jack Kirby, who is responsible for many of Marvel Comics’ most popular characters.

Kirby co-created Captain America with Joe Simon, and was responsible for the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and the Avengers with the help of Stan Lee.

While the Eternals are basically an unknown quantity except to die-hard Marvel fans, the movie studio has proven adept at introducing new and strange concepts to audiences and achieving box office success.

There was little, if any, demand for the Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, and Doctor Strange before those movies premiered in theaters. And while Black Panther wasn’t always an A-List character, the King of Wakanda has since proven his bonafides after the first solo movie made more than one billion dollars at the box office.

Marvel Studios can afford to take a gamble on something like the Eternals simply because they have the track record to make it a success, and the goodwill earned among movie audiences who will be willing to give it a try.

Attaching the Firpos to the script should generate buzz among filmmakers who might want to take a shot in the lucrative superhero genre.

The writers earned acclaim with their script for Ruin, which THR reports attracted the attention of Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot and is set up at MadRiver Pictures.

We’ll see what happens with The Eternals as development continues at Marvel Studios.