Marvel is finally starting to embrace diversity with last year's Black Panther and this weekend's Captain Marvel, the latter featuring their first female lead. But there's one final frontier left to cross, and no it isn't the Quantum Zone. Recently, rumors began to spread that Marvel was seeking an openly gay male actor to lead The Eternals. While that hasn't been confirmed yet, a top exec thinks the time is right for it to happen.
Variety chatted with Marvel's Victoria Alonso, who didn't quite confirm the rumor but was clearly embracing the idea of an openly gay superhero as one whose time has come...
“The world is ready, the world is ready,” Alonso said. “We are going to cast the best ‘Eternals’ cast that we can and when we’re ready to announce it we promise you we will.”
Alonso continued by expressing Marvel's commitment to diversity...
“Why wouldn’t we be? Why wouldn’t we be? I’m so passionate about this I’ve got to tell you. Our entire success is based on people that are incredibly different. Why wouldn’t we? Why would we only want to be recognized by only one type of person? Our audience is global, is diverse, is inclusive. If we don’t do it that way for them, we will fail. If we don’t put pedal to the metal on the diversity and the inclusivity, we will not have continued success. Our determination is to have that for all of the people out there watching our movies.”
As Wonder Woman and Black Panther have shown already, diversity can produce truly superheroic box office numbers. You can bet Marvel will be keeping a close watch on Captain Marvel's numbers starting tonight, but I don't think they have anything to worry about.
