Today marks the opening day of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Eternals, which is generating plenty of headlines for the wrong reasons after becoming the worst-reviewed installment in the franchise’s history, with the Rotten Tomatoes score of the cosmic epic having dropped even lower over the last few days to 51%.
The good news is that it’s still on track to score one of the best box office debuts of the pandemic era, with the latest projections estimating a $75 million three-day frame and a $150 million global haul. Every single MCU movie with the sole exception of The Incredible Hulk has either gotten at least one sequel or has a follow up in the works, so we’ll be very interested to see what the future holds for the titular team.
Director Chloé Zhao won two Academy Awards her last film prior to Eternals, and in a new interview with JoBlo she appeared to cast some doubt on a potential return to Kevin Feige’s world, hinting that she may opt to do something smaller instead.
“I was encouraged to make a good standalone film, very encouraged to do that. I think now the film belongs to you, not me, and we want to see how this child grows in this scary, wild, and beautiful world. And then we need to watch and listen and learn and then see where we go from there. But I think, maybe I’m wrong about this, but I feel like filmmakers, it doesn’t matter what genre, they tend to make the same movie over and over and over. There’s certain themes, there’s certain things that I would keep pushing, I’m very happy to go back to make films with five people again.”
Zhao is also attached to a bonkers-sounding futuristic sci-fi Western version of Dracula, and we won’t know whether or not an Eternals sequel will even get a green light until the box office numbers start to come in. It could be a while before we find out if the next chapter is even happening, never mind the identity of its director.