Congratulations on this small, independent film you made.
My first movie, actually.
Is this your first movie? It's my first movie.
It's my second Premiere ever of all time.
How's that sensation?
It's a strange feeling about as exciting a thing I can imagine.
Yeah, I mean, I always make this joke.
It's a ten year overnight success.
You know, I've been telling stories all my life.
When I was a little kid, I was writing stories for my mom
and so to her to bring her to a Premiere and show this movie to the whole world.
It feels like the logical conclusion of a lot of work and a lot of passion.
And I would just say, if you really love something, just keep doing it, keep trying
because you know it can happen. Dreams can come true.
Yeah, there's so much going on in Marvel over the last 15 years
that they've been going,
What was the attraction for you to get involved,
not just with them, but with this story in particular?
Honestly, it's the people that are involved.
Kevin [Feige] , Lou[is D'Esposito], Victoria [Alonso]
Nate [Moore], the producers of this project, they're incredibly thoughtful.
They love stories. And most importantly,
they gave us a permission to tell a really different story.
So for me, the MCU is a it's a sandbox.
You know, it can reflect all of humanity,
the ones that are different, the people that are the same.
And for us to play in that sandbox and add a little bit of our voice to it,
that was a gift.
And obviously, the Marvel Cinematic Universe kind of started on Earth
with Iron Man and Captain America, and now we've gone cosmic.
How was that? What it had to do?
What was the pitch they gave to you? What did Kevin kind of pitch to you?
What they wanted to kind of accomplish with the Eternals?
Yeah. Well, the process is really amazing.
You know, Kevin and Nate and all the producers at Marvel,
they are very open to what the creators want to bring.
You know, this is very much my story is very much Chloe [Zhao]'s story.
We brought a lot of ourselves to it.
And so what we really wanted to explore was love and family.
When you have to live for 10,000 years, you know, when you've been around forever,
how do the things that bother you about somebody,
the things that you love about somebody change and grow over time?
So this is an intimate epic.
We wanted to explore that on a grand stage.
And you answer a lot of fan questions
with the whole point of where were you when Thanos was doing his his days?
But you answered that question as a real, as a real kind of reason as to why
part of the history and part of that
their culture is that they're not supposed to interfere.
Was that fun?
You know,
it's a complex story to tell that side, but also deal with
what's happened in the MCU.
Yeah, we brought a lot of gear.
It was a gift and a curse to introduce ten new characters to the MCU,
and we hope you love.
But most importantly, the Eternals are soldiers.
There are soldiers that have a mission,
and they can never deviate from that mission.
They could never break those rules.
And so that's a big part of the story.
I don't want to spoil anything,
but I think that's a big question is when do you follow the rules?
When do you follow your mission and when do you follow your heart?
There's incredible cosmos to ask about working with Chloe.
Obviously, she's come off her Academy Award now as well, working with her.
Can you see why people would think she is so special
and why she's going to be one of the defining filmmakers of a generation?
I think Chloe Zhao is one of the best filmmakers that's working today,
but most importantly, she's just a good person,
and I think that's so underestimated
in Hollywood what it means to just treat people well.
She has an incredible vision, but most importantly, she's curious.
She always wants to try new things so you can see
from the course of her career, she's always trying new things.
So I spent nine months in a windowless room with her writing this movie,
and I saw every day what made her work special.
I just finally, I mean, obviously
with Eternals and Marvel sequels abound, I'm sure it's part.
Find a concept, I'm sure.
How much do they tell you about all the other stuff that's going on?
Or have they not given you any indication?
Or are you allowed to kind of draw your own story from what goes on,
but they still keep it in terms of the Eternals in the characters?
Yeah, that's one of the special things about Marvel
is there isn't a master plan.
There's just a vision to make it better and keep telling
better and better stories.
So with Eternals, they say, here's the world.
You can do whatever you want,
as long as it doesn't, you know, counteract
anything that happened and all that came before .
It's like a great mythology, and we just feel honored
to be a part of adding to that mythology.
We keep adding to it, and I hope we get to keep adding
more of an Eternals two and three. Go see the movie.
I wonder how they're going to deal
with the multiverse, given that that's the next thing you can't say, I'm sure.
But we have been on for it. We've been told a little bit about it.
We have some good friends who are working in that world and writing Dr.
Strange right now in London, in Atlanta, in L.A.
So they're making that movie, and I think you're all going to really enjoy it.
I wish you all the best for this. Thank you so much for your time.
Nice to meet you. Thank you.