Following the record-breaking ticket sales of Avengers: Endgame, the film’s directors, Anthony and Joe Russo, came to CinemaCon to accept the award for “Directors of the Year.” Since their first foray into the world of superheroes with Captain America: Winter Soldier, the Russo brothers have become known as two of the leading directors of Hollywood, earning a loyal fan base and with it, extremely high expectations for their final Marvel venture. During their time in Las Vegas, the Russos took time to speak with press about their next chapter and their appreciation for their “super-sized” opportunities.
On closing the chapter on Marvel and what’s coming next…
Joe: “We are shooting a film this summer starring Tom Holland called Cherry. Tom plays a decorated soldier who comes back from the Iraq war and is struggling with PTSD and addiction. It’s a treatise on the opioid epidemic. We’ve lost some people pretty close to us to the epidemic and this movie is very personal to us. We’re very passionate about it.”
Anthony: “We are just finishing one of the greatest runs of our entire career. We’ve loved every minute of the Marvel run. It’s been an amazing road but we are now turning into a new chapter in our careers and we are starting it off with a very small, sensitive film. It’s very much a character study about a wounded soul. We’ve been lucky in our careers. We’ve done so many different things…We’ve gone all over the maps in terms of what you can do as filmmakers and I think moving forward, we will keep surprising ourselves with what kind of movies we can make.”
On keeping superhero-sized secrets…
Anthony: “It’s hard. We’ve gotten very good at it out of necessity but it’s a difficult way to work for sure.”
On combating fan expectations…
Joe: “You make bad decisions when you’re under pressure so we just have to block all of the pressure out. I think the way we’ve learned to approach these movies is that you can’t please everybody. You can’t please all the fans that want something different from these films. We are also huge comic book fans ourselves and we try to please ourselves and tell a story we are really excited about. We hope that everyone else is as excited as we are.”
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