Update: July 17, 2024
The Russo Bros. in Talks to Return to Marvel Studios to Direct AVENGERS 5 and 6
Joe and Anthony Russo are assembling a team — once again. The Russo Bros. are in early talks to return to Marvel Studios to direct not just one, but the next two
Avengers movies, sources tell
The Hollywood Reporter.
The hiring ends a months-long, high stakes search by the studio for filmmakers to oversee the fifth and sixth
Avengers movies. Multiple names were in contention, including
Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy, who was offered the gig. Sources say the talks are in the early stages.
The move also marks a homecoming for The Russos, who jumped from the world of TV comedy on shows like
Arrested Development and
Community to blockbuster movies a decade ago, with
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014). In total, they directed four of Marvel’s biggest and best regarded movies, going on to helm
Captain America: Civil War (2016),
Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and
Avengers: Endgame (2019). Combined, their Marvel films grossed $6.681 billion, with
Endgame standing as the No. 2 movie of all time globally with $2.79 billion.
In the years since, they have become mega-producers via their AGBO banner, producing best picture winner
Everything Everywhere All at Once and pricey titles such as Amazon’s
Citadel and Netflix’s
Extraction movies. As directors, after becoming box office kings at Marvel, they stuck to streaming titles that did not reach the critical and cultural heights of their Marvel work, directing the Tom Holland crime drama
Cherry (2021) for Apple and the big budget action movie
The Gray Man (2022) at Netflix. They also directed the upcoming sci-fi adventure
The Electric State for Netflix.
The fifth
Avengers movie was previously titled
Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, and was to star Jonathan Majors as time-traveling villain Kang. But Marvel
cut ties with the actor after he was convicted of assault in harassment in December.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton was once attached to direct
Kang Dynasty, but he
departed a month before Majors’ conviction. The feature is expected to get a new name and a new focus.
The sixth
Avengers film is
Secret Wars, which is a storyline the Russos have long talked about wanting to adapt. A pair of 1980s comic book series focused on an all powerful antagonist known as the Beyonder, who in the first installment pitted Marvel’s heroes and villains against each other on a planet known as Battleworld. A 2015 revival served as the climax to writer Jonathan Hickman’s own multiverse saga, which has already had elements referenced in
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). In Hickman’s
Secret Wars, all of Marvel’s multiverses are destroyed, with remnants surviving on a single planet ruled by the villain Doctor Doom.
Avengers 5 is set for May 1, 2026 and
Secret Wars is set for May 7, 2027.
Just when you (and the Russos themselves, quite frankly) thought they were out, Kevin Feige is pulling them back in.
www.hollywoodreporter.com