The Marvel movie landscape could have played out very differently if Eternals had been more of a success, says Kumail Nanjiani.
In a recent interview with Mike Birbiglia, Nanjiani recalled how he was initially signed up for six Marvel movies and to feature in a game before his superhero career came to an untimely end.
“I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be my job for the next 10 years,'” said Nanjiani.
“I signed on for six movies. I signed on for a video game. I signed on for a theme park ride. They make you sign up for all this stuff… and then none of that happened.”
For those who have dropped off the Marvel train, Nanjiani starred as Kingo in 2021’s Eternals. While it’s not Marvel’s worst film, it was a notable flop despite making upwards of $400 million in cinemas. And it marked a key waypoint in the downturn of the Marvel cinematic universe — after all it arrived just a couple of years after the epic Avengers: Endgame.
Eternals could have branched out to form a whole new superhero team, and it had a cast to match, including Kit Harrington, Richard Madden, Salma Hayek and Barry Keoghan (among others). But after it fell flat, Marvel exec Kevin Feige confirmed in 2024 there are no plans to make an Eternals 2 at present.
A similar outcome came for Marvels a couple of years later, which in 2023 made just over half the amount Eternals managed in cinemas. It cost a fortune to make, too, with a reported production budget of more than $300 million.
“It came out and it got really bad reviews and it didn’t do that well,” says Nanjiani of Eternals. “It shattered me too much. That’s when I was like, ‘Oh I need to go to therapy to figure this out.’"
He’s not spent those years out of work, mind. Nanjiani’s next major release is Driver’s Ed, a Bobby Farrelly comedy set to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12th. It’s a road trip flick in which a teen steals a car in order to visit his girlfriend.
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