Russo brothers: ‘There’s an inherent elitism in Anglo Cinema that is not interesting to us’

Not quite twins, but almost Irish twins, Anthony Russo (52) and Joe Russo (50) are the movieverse’s most commercially successful siblings. The most recent recruits to the $2 billion movie-maker club — following on from James Cameron’s Avatar and JJ Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens — trail only Steven Spielberg in terms of career box-office receipts.

Much of that business was scared up by the brothers’ run at the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a tenure that saw them directing four of the biggest movies of all time: Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), and Avengers: Endgame (2019); Endgame alone grossed over $2.798 billion worldwide.

Those figures, while extraordinary, are not necessarily an aberration. From the beginning of their career, the Cleveland-born brothers have found themselves at the vanguard of the film industry.

As graduate students, the innovative Anthony and Joe wrote, directed, and produced their self-financed first feature, Pieces, a calling-card that brought them to the attention of Steven Soderbergh and others. Their second feature, Welcome to Colinwood (2002), a caper comedy starring William H Macy, became the third feature to emerge from Soderbergh and George Clooney’s Section Eight production company. It was a mentorship that continues to influence their work.

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“We were taught very early on by George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh this notion of ‘one for you, one for them’,” says Joe. “Because Stephen always said it’s called the film business for a reason. The business component of it is something that you can’t escape, especially when you’re making movies on the scale we do. Anthony and I have learned to make one for us, one for them. And now we’re trying to allow other opportunities for more diverse filmmakers to tell stories at AGBO, our production company.

“We use these giant commercial vehicles to fund the company so that we can produce stories like Everything Everywhere All At Once, or Mosul, which was a film that we made two years ago that cost $20 million, starring all Arabic cast, speaking exclusively in Iraqi through for the entire film. That was an opportunity for us to make a quote-unquote Hollywood movie where Arabic actors have the opportunity to portray heroes instead of villains.”

In addition to the Section Eight love, Kevin Reilly, who had taken over the ailing FX network, was equally impressed with the Russo’s debut feature and asked them to direct the pilot for the sitcom, Lucky. That project, in turn, was admired by entertainment veteran Ron Howard, who hired the brothers to produce and direct the short-lived but wildly influential Arrested Development, a TV show that brought fleet-footed HD cameras and street settings to a previously set-bound genre.

They subsequently served as executive producers and directors on the first several seasons of the sitcoms Community and Happy Endings before landing work in the MCU.

Post Avengers: Endgame, the brothers have evidently stepped back from the exclusively theatrical “spectacle cinema” (to use Joe’s term) toward competing streaming juggernauts.

Cherry, a PTSD drama starring Tom Holland and Jack Reynor set in the Russo’s hometown, landed on Apple+ last year. Extraction, a high-octane black-ops thriller penned by Joe Russo, reached a record-breaking 99 million households in its first four weeks on Netflix in 2020. That same service has backed the Russo Brothers’ The Gray Man with a production budget rumoured to exceed $200 million. It’s an interesting move from the siblings at a moment when some industry analysts are questioning the business model underpinning the streaming giants. (Others astutely characterise any downturn as a “correction” following the enormous surge in Netflix subscriptions during the pandemic.)

“We like making movies that have broad appeal,” says Joe. “That’s why we like working with Netflix. There’s a socioeconomic barrier to going to a theatre. It’s very expensive. And, in fact, you could probably call it an elitist luxury. And we find that digital distributors are democratising storytelling in a way. And in fact, probably done more in the last five years for diversity and storytelling than Hollywood has done in a hundred years. So all of these things combine to make it more compelling for us as storytellers.”

The Gray Man stars Ryan Gosling as Sierra Six, a jailbird-turned-CIA black-ops assassin hired to clean up situations the government would rather not be associated with, and Chris Evans as Lloyd Hansen, a psychotic independent contractor hired to clean up even messier situations, notably, when Gosling realises that something is amiss with his orders. Grand action sequences ensue as the Russo Brothers, working with regular screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, take aim at incel culture and toxic masculinity by putting a pimp moustache on Captain America.

“Having the opportunity to work with Chris for so many years on those four films was an amazing experience,” says Anthony. “One of the things we liked about making the Marvel movies was our ability to work with very talented actors over multiple films over multiple years. You develop a more sophisticated understanding of one another and what your capacity is creatively, and what your interests are. Chris impressed us so much with what he could do with Captain America. We would often say to one another: wow, there’s nobody else that could play Captain America better than Chris. He’s a sophisticated actor. He’s very intelligent. He thinks like a filmmaker.

“We wanted to find something to do with him that was completely opposite. It’s a testament to Chris as a performer that he can actually be the perfect embodiment of Captain America, while at the same time, he could play Lloyd Hanson. Those two roles are so far away from one another. That was part of the fun for us watching him, and we hope it’s part of the fun for audiences as well.”

The Gray Man boasts Brazil’s Wagner Moura, Cuba’s Ana de Armas, and — most memorably — Kollywood superstar Dhanush in supporting roles.

Similarly, Citadel, an incoming science fiction drama series created by the Russos and Patrick Moran for Amazon Prime Video, stars Richard Madden, Priyanka Chopra, Stanley Tucci, Roland Moller, and Ireland’s Susan Lynch in the US version, with spin-off shows set in Italy, India, Spain and Mexico. Thinking beyond the anglophone world is part of a grander strategy, says Anthony.

“Joe and I grew up very close to the Cleveland Cinematheque, and it was this wonderful art-house theatre that had amazing global programming. So, from a young age, we were very much into global cinema. We love the idea that we can access cultures around the world through cinema. And what we’ve seen in the development of film, especially in the last decade or so — and particularly with the work that we’ve been doing with the Marvel movies — is that there’s a global audience that is developing more and more.

“It’s an audience that’s interconnected and dialoguing with one another from all corners of the earth about movies. It’s not fragmented by sort of national or cultural sort of experience any longer. It’s very much a global experience. We love that about it. We think that’s an amazing development in human history. We love that cinema can serve as a vehicle so that all these wonderful cultures around the world can contribute.”

“There’s an inherent elitism in Anglo Cinema that is not interesting to us,” adds Joe. “We’re more interested in telling a story to a, you know, a tuk tuk driver than we are to someone who sits in a very comfortable position in the West. We came from Cleveland, Ohio. We had no connection to the film business. We’re more compelled by, you know, stories that normal people want to hear than we are by anything else.”

The Gray Man opens in cinemas on July 15th and streams on Netflix from July 22nd