It didn’t take long for Hollywood to come calling for Chloé Zhao. According to Variety, the director, whose 2017 film The Rider lapped up praise at Sundance, has been tapped to direct Marvel’s upcoming film The Eternals. The film tells the story of an age-old battle between two groups: the Eternals, a super-powered humanoid race, and the Deviants, their villainous analogues.

It’s a major move for Zhao, an indie figure with only two features under her belt thus far. It’s also a welcome bit of change from Marvel; Zhao is now third woman, and only the second woman of color, to be tapped for an upcoming project from the studio, following in the footsteps of Anna Boden (who is co-directing Captain Marvel) and Gina Prince-Bythewood (Silver and Black). She’s also the second Asian woman to get the reins to a major upcoming superhero movie; the other is Cathy Yan, who is taking on D.C.’s Birds of Prey, starring Margot Robbie.

Marvel and D.C. have consistently drawn criticism for their largely white and male directors, particularly since the dawn of the modern superhero blockbuster. Patty Jenkins, who directed Wonder Woman, was the first woman to helm a major superhero release in the modern era; Lexi Alexander directed the Marvel property Punisher: War Zone in 2008, but the studio failed to hire any women after its post–Iron Man re-invention.

Zhao’s hiring also seems like a new front for the culling system giant studios often use these days for their major blockbusters: for years, studio heads have plucked inexperienced white, male directors with one or two indies under their belts for enormous projects tied to major properties like Jurassic World (Colin Trevorrow) or Spider-Man: Homecoming (Jon Watts). By tapping Zhao, Marvel is bringing in a woman with similar credentials—and living up to Kevin Feige’s promise that more women would be added to the slate. “I cannot promise that all 20 Marvel movies will have female directors, but a heck of a lot of them will,” he said in June. The next month, it was reported that Cate Shortland was in talks to direct the upcoming standalone Black Widow movie. After Captain Marvel, this would be the second Marvel movie to focus solely on a female lead.

But back to indie directors making the big leap to blockbusters. Zhao now joins this complicated Hollywood tradition, which matches relatively untested filmmakers to major franchises in the hopes that they’ll inject an old property with something fresh and lively. Of course, as we have learned, this formula doesn’t always work—because the skill set needed to helm a huge tentpole is tough to learn from an indie movie, and because studios often end up balking, stifling the creative threads that made those lesser known filmmakers stand out in the first place. Hollywood is littered with abandoned, or poorly executed projects of this ilk; there’s the Josh Trank Fantastic Four, the Michelle MacLaren Wonder Woman that never was, the Thor Patty Jenkins almost directed. Even more seasoned filmmakers have felt the squeeze of the superhero studio machine; take Edgar Wright exiting Ant-Man after years in development, or Rick Famuyiwa leaving The Flash. In the next lane over, you could also look at Phil Lord and Chris Miller getting the boot from Solo: A Star Wars Story. Trevorrow, who exited Star Wars IX, is also part of this elite club of directors who got a pink slip from Lucasfilm.

Of course, plenty of directors have pushed past studio restraints to make well-received films while also maintaining strong studio relationships. After the success of Creed, Ryan Coogler went on to make Black Panther, a movie that felt imbued with his sensibility; Taika Waititi successfully brought his goofball tendencies to Thor: Ragnarok, and so on and so forth. And per Variety, it seems like Zhao is well-equipped for this challenge. Since the acclaim of The Rider, she’s been eyed for major studio projects around town. She was reportedly so impressive in her meeting with Marvel execs that the studio booked her for Eternals before any other major players could line her up for their projects, a sterling vote of confidence.