Even though the Russo Brothers followed up “Captain America: Winter Soldier” with films that broke records and were much larger in scale, particularly with “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame,” fans often cite ‘Winter Soldier’ as the best of the bunch. And those people will be psyched to learn about the Russo Brothers’ next feature, “The Gray Man.”
According to Deadline, Netflix is teaming up with the Russo Brothers to create “The Gray Man,” starring none other than Captain America himself, Chris Evans, and some new guy named *checks notes* Ryan Gosling. The film is a big-budget action feature directed by the duo and written by Joe Russo (with frequent collaborators Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely polishing the script). And perhaps the most shocking aspect of this deal is that Netflix is expected to provide a production budget of approximately $200 million, making “The Gray Man” the most expensive film in the company’s history.
Based on Mark Greaney’s novel, “The Gray Man” introduces Court Gentry (Gosling), aka the Gray Man, a former CIA operative that is hunted down by a former co-worker at the CIA, Lloyd Hansen (Evans). The film is expected to launch a new ‘Bond’-esque franchise, with Gosling returning for multiple installments.
“The movie is a real mano a mano between those two great actors, who represent two different versions of the CIA, in what it can be, and what it can do,” Anthony Russo said. “For those who were fans of ‘Captain America: Winter Soldier,’ this is us moving into that territory in more of a real-world setting. That’s what this movie really means for us.”
Joe Russo added, “The intention is for it to be competitive with any theatrical and the ability to do it with Gosling and Evans is a dream for us. The idea is to create a franchise and build out a whole universe, with Ryan at the center of it. We have all committed to the first movie and that’s got to be great to get us to the second movie. These are master assassins and Gosling’s character gets burned by the CIA and Evans’ character has to hunt him down. We have a great working relationship with Netflix, and we go back almost 20 years with Scott Stuber. We formed AGBO to be an agnostic storytelling company, where we figure out the best platform. We think Netflix is the perfect place for this film.”
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This is hardly the first time that “The Gray Man” was being groomed for the feature film treatment. Previously, James Gray was actually attached to direct with Brad Pitt to star. Then, in 2015, it was reported that Charlize Theron was interested in the lead role. That’s also the first time we heard that the Russos were involved.
As for when “The Gray Man” will actually get in front of cameras, the report claims that everyone is hoping for a January start date for production. Of course, with the international aspect of the story, there are a lot of variables that they might have to contend with, given the global pandemic. But hey, let’s hope for January.