Marvel’s Eternals Star Kumail Nanjiani Says He Originally Signed on for ‘Six Movies, a Video Game, a Theme Park Ride’

We haven’t heard much from any of the characters in Marvel’s Eternals since the film debuted in 2021, and apart from a single What If? episode and a quick nod in Captain America: Brave New World, it’s unclear if the MCU is going to acknowledge them in a serious way again. But to hear actor Kumail Nanjiani tell it, there may have originally been much bigger plans for at least his character to have a larger role in the MCU long-term.

On a recent episode of the Working It Out podcast, Nanjiani talked about his reaction to Eternals’ release and its audience reception, saying that he originally signed on with Marvel for “six movies, a video game, a theme park ride.” At the time, he says he thought, “This is going to be my job for the next ten years…I’ll be doing Marvel movies every year, in between I’ll be doing my own little things, whatever I want to do. And then none of that happened.”

It’s likely that whatever big plans Marvel had for him and the other Eternals were pivoted away from when Eternals was received poorly by both critics and audiences, and despite a strong initial box office performance, interest quickly fell off and the film ended up over budget. In 2022, Patton Oswalt seemed to tease an Eternals 2 also directed by Chloe Zhao, but unless Nanjiani is doing a really good bluff here, it sounds like that’s not currently in the works anywhere.

Kumail Nanjiani has spoken openly before about how the critical and audience reaction to Marvel’s Eternals impacted him personally. Back in March, he talked about how Marvel had expected the film to be a major success, he thought the film was good himself, and he hyped himself for audiences to feel the same.

So when it launched to middling reviews and weak audience reception, Nanjiani has said he was devastated. “It was really, really hard and that’s when I was like, ‘This is unfair to me. It’s unfair to [my wife] Emily,” he said in March. “I can’t approach my work this way anymore, some s**t’s gotta change.’ So very intentionally I did start counselling.”

Nanjiani echoed similar sentiments in ths recent episode of Working It Out, adding that the last 15 minutes of his most recent stand-up set cover this exact topic.

We gave Marvel’s Eternals a 7/10 in our review, saying, “Eternals is beautifully shot and terrifically acted, but it bites off more than it can chew in its third act.”

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Image credit: Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images for Disney