It must be daunting for a filmmaker to take a pitch meeting with Marvel Studios given the franchise’s unprecedented success over the last thirteen years. Stepping into a room with Kevin Feige and his trusted lieutenants to explain why you’re the ideal person to tackle the latest mega budget superhero epic is enough to cause sleepless nights, but Eternals director Chloé Zhao reveals she took a more interesting approach.
At the time she landed the gig, Zhao had yet to win two Academy Awards for directing and producing the acclaimed Nomadland, so she didn’t have the industry cache that she does now. However, she clearly did something right if Feige admitted he wouldn’t have dreamed of making the movie without her.
In a new interview with Fandango, Zhao admitted that she opened her pitch in the most unexpected of ways, utilizing a blown-up picture of a grain of sand and some poetry to get the ball rolling.
“When I got the opportunity to pitch to Kevin, I was very nervous. I actually started pitching by showing him a blown-up macro photo of sand, and then I cited a William Blake poem. That’s where we started. Ultimately, it was a very long pitch and it covered almost every aspect of making the film.”
Feige is always looking for talent who can bring a fresh perspective to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s standard formula, so he must have known he was on to a winner when Zhao began selling herself as the ideal candidate in such bizarre fashion. Eternals is just over three weeks away from coming to theaters, when we’ll find out if it manages to live up to the hype and expectation.