10 IMMORTAL HEROES 7,000 YEARS ONE OSCAR-WINNING DIRECTOR MARVEL’S BOLDEST MOVIE YET
Since Jon Favreau helmed Iron Man in 2008, Marvel Studios has been fearless in hiring directors not typically associated with blockbusters. Kenneth Branagh, Shane Black and Taika Waititi are just a few of the names you wouldn’t have previously considered for big-budget capes-and-spandex adventures. The latest pleasant surprise in the fold is Chloe Zhao, the Chinese filmmaker known thus far for Songs My Brothers Taught Me, The Rider and Nomadland, the latter earning her Best Director and Best Picture Oscars (among countless other accolades). It makes her the first Best Director Oscar-winner behind an MCU movie, even though her pitch was made just before she hit the road with Frances McDormand.
“I actually pitched Eternals to Kevin [Feige, Marvel Studios President] and Nate [Moore, Vice President of Production and Development] the day before I got into my van and drove to do Nomadland,” Zhao tells Total Film with a laugh. “I remember, as I was leaving, Victoria [A/onso, Executive Vice President of Production] said, ‘Make sure you come back. It’s going to be a long journey.’ I drove away the next morning to the desert.”
‘IF THERE’S A LEAD IN THIS ENSEMBLE, IT IS SERSI, IT IS GEMMA CHAN’
KEVIN FEIGE
Her filmography might mark Zhao out as an unusual choice, given that her films have been defiantly character-driven, naturalistic, intimate affairs, but this garlanded filmmaker is also a proud genre geek. Growing up in China, she didn’t have access to Hollywood movies until her teens (True Lies is the first US movie she remembers seeing). “Earlier on, it was a lot of anime and manga, and also the Chinese wuxia genre of TV shows and things like that,” she recalls. “But my early exposure was definitely like Star Wars and James Cameron’s movies.” Zhao made sure the word got out via her agent that she’d love to do a Marvel Studios movie.
When she did end up getting a meeting, Zhao gravitated towards despite not knowing the source material. “I was not familiar with them,” she laughs. I thought, ‘What an incredible way to explore that in an allegorical and fantastical way,’ which is the type of storytelling that really excites me.”
