Exclusively with the Russo brothers, from Avengers to directing Netflix’s most expensive movie, The Gray Man

On the other side of the computer screen, in Zoom, are the highest-grossing film directors in the history of wonder, Avengers: End of the gamewhich for 50 million dollars is not the highest grossing in history (beats Avatar, which was re-released a few years ago to surpass the Russo Brothers). And Joe and Anthony Russo are there, on the monitor, talking about the most expensive movie in the history of Netflix, the gray man.

Played by a former Avenger, Chris Evans (he was Captain America) and Ryan Gosling, he stars Ana de Armas (the last of 007 and former partner of Ben Affleck), Regé-Jean Page (Simon Basset in the first season). from Bridgerton) and Billy Bob Thornton.

Gosling is Sierra Six, an inmate turned CIA black ops killer, and Evans is Lloyd Hansen, another killer as the actor’s character. La La TerraBlueSan Valentino e Voyagebut something crazier that the CIA resorts to – covertly, of course – when Six breaks the mold.

After Avengers: End of the gameAs directors, the Russo brothers did something on a smaller scale than what they had created for Marvel. It’s the title Cherry, it premiered on Apple TV + last year and hardly anyone saw it. The protagonist was also another of the Avengers, Tom HollandSpiderman.

But the gray manthat Netflix premieres on Friday 22 in Latin America, without going to local cinemas – it did, in some theaters, in the United States last Friday – expect a resounding click-through success in the streaming giant.

In this exclusive interview we had with Anthony (52, born February 3, 1970, Cleveland, Ohio) and his younger brother Joe (age 51, July 8, 1971, also a Cleveland native) they took turns answering, like the good duo oiled are during filming.

Or not?

-I want to ask you how, if anything, you divide the task on set. One talks more with the actors, another prefers to work more on the technical aspects?

Joe Russo: -No. The only duty we shared on set is that I actually eat more food than he does. And this.

Antonio Russo: -Some days…

Joe Russo: -Apart from that, you know, we do everything the same. That is to say, I know there are some directors who share functions, directing teams. We are not one of those teams. We do everything together, from start to finish.

-You chose Chris Evans, with whom you landed your first big break at Marvel, with “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”. Why did they choose him to make a villain, a villain?

Antonio Russo: -We have had the opportunity to work with Chris for many years, on four films about the character of Captain America. And it was an incredible experience. Joe and I were talking, often at that time we were like Wow, there is no one who can play this character better than Chris Evans.

We were always very impressed with his interpretation of the character, where he could take that character and what he could do with it. As an actor, it’s a challenging role. But during that time we got to know Chris very well, and we knew the vast range, the great capacity within him for creative expression. And we wanted to find something new to do with him, something different from that character.

So basically we thought it would be fun to work with him on a character that was almost the exact opposite of what Captain America is. I mean, you can’t go further than Lloyd Hansen’s Captain America, the character he plays in the gray man. So I think it was a lot of fun for the three of us to be able to explore a character that is so opposite to him.

-And the film has a kind of political dimension, like it did in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”, doesn’t it?

Joe Russo: -Yup. I mean, I think this is like a complementary piece of The Winter Soldier. It’s a modern-themed spy movie. And it’s a chase movie, hunting as it was The Winter Soldier in many ways. So we like to make, you know, movies that, depending on our mood as storytellers, have an interconnection.

We have as “callbacks” with (your series) Development stopped Y Community. We like to weave actors together, you know, so we look at everything in a very intertextual way where we are very self-referential. And we know that there are a lot of similarities in these films in many ways.

But they are very different because there is no one with a cape or costume on the gray man. So we thought it would be fun to create an even more realistic, or grounded, version of The Winter Soldier.

If it weren’t for Marvel …

In fact, Anthony – who appears to be the one who organizes the plots of the brothers’ films or, at least, the one who starts with the first drafts of the scripts, had read with Anthony the book. The gray man while they were engaged The Winter Soldier. And they also wrote a first draft between takes of the Captain America movie. In other words, that was the idea, later The Winter Soldierthey might as well direct the gray manYes

We already know what prevented it. Kevin Feige, president of Marvel, commissioned them, in the first place, Civil Wary, with the successes in tow, the two of Avengers.

-It is said that “The Gray Man” is Netflix’s most expensive movie.

Joe Russo: -It’s a very big movie, there are Hollywood stars, it’s a big cast and you have nine action scenes … So, it’s not a cheap movie to make, but we can’t tell you if it’s the most expensive movie or the least. never. Netflix. It is difficult to specify, because the budgets are not the same. This was not a budget running a traditional studio.

– “The Gray Man,” Mark Greaney’s novel, has been very successful and has written eight sequels. Is it your plan to go back to the characters from “The Gray Man”?

Joe Russo: -When I started adapting the book, I talked to him on several occasions, he is a very talented, very intelligent writer. And he understood that we would take some things from the first novel, change others, give more life to some characters and create others. And no, it’s not our immediate plans to go back to them, but we enjoyed this universe and the characters. Everything will depend on how the audience responds after the premiere, but we have other projects.

“One of them, which we started shooting later this year,” says Anthony, is The electrical statewhat, how not, will reunite them with another actor of the Avengersin this case Chris Pratt, Peter Quil / Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxyand another Netflix star. Nothing less than Millie Bobby Brown.

The story is based on Simon Stålenhag’s novel, published in 2018. In late 1997, an orphaned runaway teenager (sounds familiar to Eleven fans?) And her little yellow toy robot travel West. The ruins of gigantic combat drones blanket the countryside, along with the discarded debris of a high-tech consumer society dependent on a virtual reality system. Together with an eccentric tramp (guess who will play him) she goes in search of her younger brother.

-Is there anything you miss from Marvel?

Joe Russo: -I want to tell you that we miss all our friends there. We’re very close to everyone, all the actors, Kevin Feige and everyone at Marvel, you know, our dearest friends. We have spent ten years working with the same group of people and you develop a very strong bond with them.

-But they made the highest-grossing Marvel movie of all time (“Avengers: Endgame”). Do you think or do you have any projects to direct or produce in Marvel?

Antonio Russo: -We love Marvel and what we did at Marvel Studios is one of the highlights of our career. No, we don’t currently have plans to do anything else with Marvel, but maybe something could happen in the future …