For years, Marvel Studios made waves by announcing its movies years in advance, building hype like no other studio and giving fans plenty of teases of what was coming. But Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers 4 are almost certainly going to feature some major deaths that drastically change the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and since the studio wants to keep those deaths a secret for as long as possible, it’s been announcing future release dates but not telling the world what their upcoming film slate looks like.

Now a new rumor claims one of Marvel’s upcoming projects will be an Eternals movie, based on the characters created by Jack Kirby in the mid-1970s.



The rumor comes from Bleeding Cool, who promises that the tip about an Eternals movie comes from an “ultra-reliable” source who has a history of being correct about Marvel scoops. The site claims that “we are to expect an announcement imminently,” so assuming this is true, perhaps the studio is waiting until the release Avengers: Infinity War before making it official.

The Eternals were created by Kirby and first appeared in the pages of Marvel Comics in 1976. An alien race called the Celestials (a name that should sound familiar to even those who haven’t read the comics) visited Earth five million years ago and performed genetic experiments on early forms of life, unlocking the ability for super-powered mutations to exist and creating the Eternals and the Deviants in the process. The two became enemies, and the story gets very weird from there (as you might expect from anything cosmic and Kirby-related), involving the Eternals gaining godlike powers, impersonating the ancient Greek gods, the destruction of Atlantis, and more.

We’ve seen the Celestials in the MCU already, during a flashback scene in Guardians of the Galaxy and up close and personal with Ego (Kurt Russell) in Guardians Vol. 2. Digging through the Eternals’ complicated comic history, one thing stood out to me: Thanos, the villain of Avengers: Infinity War, is an Eternal. That film could provide a springboard to telling more stories about members of that alien race.

Again, while it’s just a rumor for now, the idea of an Eternals movie seems to fit within what we know of Marvel’s plans for the future. We know they’re looking to expand the cosmic side of the MCU in the coming years, and there’s no better way to do that than to embrace the zaniness of Jack Kirby’s mind. After all, DC Films is currently doing the same thing with Ava DuVernay’s New Gods, so it would be interesting to see two Kirby-related cosmic projects co-exist in the blockbuster landscape.