The Eternal Warrior may not be the most mainstream of superhero characters, but that could all change with one theatrical movie. Years ago, it was announced that the Valiant Comics character would be played on the big screen by none other than Dave Bautista, who’s known for playing Drax the Destroyer in the Guardians of the Galaxy films. Sadly, this hasn’t amounted to much in terms of production.
The lack of news on the planned Eternal Warrior movie likely stems from the dubious nature of Valiant’s cinematic rights and the failure of the Bloodshot movie. This has seen Gilad Anni-Padda, who is a more secondary character compared to X-O Manowar, Bloodshot and the Harbinger teenagers, pushed to the back burner. Here’s the eternal history behind the so-far unmade comic book movie.
What We Know About the Eternal Warrior Movie
The Eternal Warrior movie was tentatively announced back in 2017, as was Dave Bautista’s supposed involvement in the project. This was during the early days of Sony’s deal with Valiant Comics as they attempted to turn Valiant’s heroes into a cinematic universe. This was also back when Dinesh Shamdasani, who was behind the 2012 Valiant Comics relaunch, was still heading the company. Keep in mind that this was so early and different from how things turned out that Jared Leto was still supposedly the actor set to portray Bloodshot in the movies.
In the following year, however, major changes occurred that drastically affected how both the Valiant comic books and cinematic universe unfolded. Needless to say, none of these happened as they were originally planned and the results have been incredibly controversial among the fanbase.
The Failure of the Valiant Cinematic Universe
The first major chink in the armor of the Valiant universes happened in early 2018 when DMG Entertainment bought out Valiant Entertainment. This led to Shamdasani being ousted and much of the tight control and continuity between the Valiant comic books being jettisoned, with regular publication of the titles being inconsistent ever since. Given that much of the Hollywood headway made for Valiant had been at Shamdasani’s command, it makes sense that his departure spelled doom for these well-laid plans.
Later in 2018, the film rights for Harbinger, which had been part of the deal cooking with Sony’s planned Valiant Cinematic Universe, reverted back to Paramount. This meant that the initial plans for two Bloodshot movies, two Harbinger movies and a Harbinger Wars crossover suddenly became a lot less likely to happen. With these basic aspects of the Valiant Universe having a hard time being brought to the big screen, what hope did the more B-list (for Valiant) Eternal Warrior have?
Then came the 2020 Bloodshot, the performance of which has destroyed plans for a Valiant Cinematic Universe for all but the most hopeful. The movie was released right at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with its release in theaters happening days before many countries began lockdown measures. Thus, very few actually got to see the movie in theaters, and those that did were far from raving about it. Bloodshot was deemed to be less than even mediocre by both audiences and critics, and its lack of box office success to soften these blows meant that there was no momentum going forward for more movies or other adaptations of the largely obscure Valiant character stable. The pandemic in general also pushed back Sony’s development slate, with low-rung priorities being silently delayed indefinitely.
Even before Bloodshot flopped up a storm, there had been no real news about The Eternal Warrior since Bautista’s announced involvement. Again, this likely reflected Valiant as a whole changing hands in the months after this announcement, with the continued hurdles of the movies only pushing the movie back even further. Last fall saw the announcement that a Bloodshot sequel was in development, but how much of this was face-saving and wishful thinking on Sony’s part is yet to be seen, especially since the movie hasn’t been mentioned since.
For the time being, Sony instead seems to be focusing on its recent success with Spider-Man characters, including the two Venom movies as well as the upcoming Morbius. Thus, with one of Valiant’s more mainstream characters struggling to develop anything in way of hype or interest, fans may be waiting an eternity to see the Eternal Warrior fight through the ages in theaters. So while there’s been nothing in way of an official cancellation, the fact that nothing ever really got off the ground concerning the project makes it easy to quietly abandon.
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