Joe and Anthony Russo aren’t afraid of a challenge. After hitting big with 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the brothers sprang straight into 2016’s even bigger follow-up, Captain America: Civil War. They went bigger yet again for Avengers: Infinity War, before going about as big as you can possibly get with Infinity Saga climax Avengers: Endgame. But while their upcoming action-thriller The Gray Man is in many ways smaller, a return to the grittier, grounded stakes of their first Marvel movie (“We wanted to use The Winter Soldier as a springboard into something else action-oriented,” says Joe Russo), its creation still proved punishing. “This movie almost killed us,” Joe Russo laughs. “There are, like, nine action sequences, and it’s so relentless in that regard. It was relentless to make.”
Adapted from Mark Greaney’s novel by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (who penned all of the Russos’ Marvel films) and Joe Russo himself, The Gray Man is a setpiece-packed cat-and-mouse spy thriller. In this case, the mouse is Ryan Gosling’s Courtland Gentry (aka Sierra Six), a CIA mercenary who’s running for his life after uncovering information that puts him in the crosshairs; the cat is Chris Evans’ gleefully sadistic sociopath Lloyd Hansen, hired to hunt Six down and planning to enjoy the task far more than any right-minded person should. It’s a streamlined story with plenty of potential for explosive action, all stemming from a battle of wills between its two central forces. “We’re very character-oriented, Joe and I,” says Anthony Russo. “We start all of our exploration of action through character. How do we test who this character is? How do we trap them in the worst possible place, like in the airplane sequence. That’s a very vulnerable place for that character to be in, and it shows you how vigilant he is, and how disciplined he is.”
While making The Gray Man was no easy feat, the Russos are just getting started when it comes to bringing stories from the world of Sierra Six to the screen. Early plans are in motion for a follow-up, as well as potential spin-offs. “We never want to jinx it,” says Joe Russo. “But we’re already thinking through where it goes from here. We like to build out worlds, and we would rather gamble on the upside and put the energy and time in to build out that universe prior to the release, so that the ideas are more germane and organic. That’s how you build out a more complex mosaic narrative.” If it all comes to fruition, the duo will be taking a hands-on approach to telling more Gray Man stories. “We’re intimately involved in all of it,” confirms Joe. “The focus is to make ‘Gray Man 2’. Our appetite is voracious and the intention is always to do more than we can.” Like we said: the Russo Brothers aren’t afraid of a challenge.
Read Empire’s full The Gray Man feature – talking to Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, the Russo Brothers and more about the making of their relentless action blockbuster – in our upcoming Summer Preview issue, on sale Thursday 12 May and available to pre-order online here. The Gray Man comes to UK cinemas from 15 July, and streams on Netflix from 22 July.