Credit: Marvel StudiosEternals is one of the odder projects that Marvel Studios has produced and it just gained a new weird footnote: apparently, Disney “accidentally” claimed that the production of the 2021 film produced more greenhouse gases than three major cities.
We’ll back up for a moment and set some context. Eternals was directed by Chloé Zhao, who had won the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director for Nomadland (2020) immediately before she joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Zhao co-wrote the screenplay with Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo, and Kaz Firpo, based on characters created by Jack Kirby, arguably the greatest and most influential figure in Marvel Comics history (without the self-promotion instincts of Stan Lee).
The film starred a huge ensemble of international stars, including Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie, and Kit Harington.
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In short, the movie had a whole lot going for it. But when it was released in theaters, it immediately hit the wall of superhero fatigue that kicked in post-Avengers: Endgame (2019).
Eternals was not a flop like several of the MCU movies that followed it, it also grossed a “mere” $402 million, while audiences and critics were bemused by the film’s only slight connections to the greater Marvel narrative and some of Jack Kirby’s more out-there cosmic ideas.
These days, chances of an Eternals sequel seem slim, and further chances of Kit Harington showing up in some kind of Black Knight spinoff are ever more distant. The movie has been relegated to “remember that?” status within the Marvel fandom and may someday be more notable for containing the single off-camera appearance of Mahershala Ali as Blade in the MCU to date.
However, Forbes has managed to discover a particularly weird new aspect of the movie via financial filings in the United Kingdom. In the UK, the governmental Audio-Visual Expenditure Credit (AVEC) can potentially nab studios up to 25.5% of cashback (basically) for productions that spend a significant, documented percentage of their signature in the country.
Unlike the United States, companies like Disney/Marvel Studios have to publicly file documents about it, which is why we know how much Snow White and The Acolyte are underpaying female employees.
This time around, it appears that Olympia Productions UK, the company Marvel set up to produce Eternals, met the Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) minimums for environmental disclosures and, bizarrely, filed documents that “showed that in the period of just over a year to September 30, 2020, its total gross emissions came to 2,629,066 tCO2e.
In comparison, page 82 of the 2021-2022 financial statements for Transport for London show that it generated 831,624 tCO2e which is less than a third of Eternals‘ emissions.”
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It appears that Marvel made a literal mathematical error in the filing, which is pretty weird when you’re dealing with financial documents that account for tens of millions of dollars.
A Disney spokesperson said, “This is indeed an error in our reporting. In the original submission for The Eternals [sic], totals for each emissions category were pulled and were in kg CO2e, but the conversion into tonnes CO2e was not made.” According to Disney, the actual emissions were “2,629.1 tonnes CO2e, which is right in line for what the emissions for a tentpole production should be.”
Eternals is now notable for two things: Mahershala Ali’s cameo and (not) producing triple the carbon dioxide that the city of London does.
Do you want an Eternals sequel? Why is Disney bad at math?