Where do you go after Avengers: Endgame? Marvel has had its growing pains with following up on one of the biggest movies of all time, but directors Anthony and Joe Russo have had no such trouble.
Fresh off their Avengers stint, the duo grew out AGBO – a production company where they had free rein to pick their own projects (including Netflix's wildly successful Extraction), all while amplifying new voices.
"We're in a unique position in our career where we can pick and choose what it is we want to do," Joe Russo tells us during a press event for Netflix's The Gray Man.
According to Joe Russo, AGBO "is really built upon a lesson we learned from Steven Soderbergh: just the notion of 'one for you, one for them'." He continues, "Film is a business and when you make people money, you can use the cachet and the brand value that you get out of that to make more personal projects."
That, in turn, has led the Russos into the path of some up-and-coming filmmakers – as well as producing Everything Everywhere All at Once, directed by the Daniels.
"We're trying to open the door for other young interesting filmmakers like the Daniels," Joe Russo explains. "We're trying to use the sort of business moves that Anthony and I can make to help younger filmmakers get through the system with really interesting and personal material."
Away from fostering the next generation of talent, the Russos have another major Netflix project on their hands – one that reportedly exceeds The Gray Man's $200m budget. Millie Bobby Brown is attached to star in The Electric State, while Chris Pratt is in talks to join her.
"It's based on a brilliant graphic novel by Simon Stalenhag and it sort of reimagines the 1990s as a sort of 1990s American West," Anthony Russo says. "A war happens between humans and AI robots and this story is set in the aftermath of that war. It’s basically about a sister who’s been separated from her brother during the war and she’s trying to find him."
