Joe and Anthony Russo had only directed crime caper Welcome to Collinwood and comedy You, Me and Dupree before boarding the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Captain America: Civil War, but the directorial duo are hoping upcoming Netflix blockbuster The Gray Man will give them a third shared sandbox to call their own in the space of under a decade.
The siblings remain the only filmmakers to helm four installments in the world’s biggest franchise, and they’ve already admitted that they’re planning to expand the world first introduced in Chris Hemsworth’s smash hit actioner Extraction. Hoping to complete a hattrick, the Russos confirmed to ScreenRant that plans are afoot for more Gray Man adventures once the blockbuster lands on July 22.
“We certainly think like that. We formed [our] company, AGBO, with our partners Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely who wrote all of our Marvel movies, so we love thinking about narrative universes. It’s in our DNA now from our work at Marvel. So most things we do here we think about as a narrative universe. Certainly, that’s how we approach The Gray Man. We have many iterations of this narrative in our minds and it can have a variety of expressions, either in films or series.”
There’s already been talk of Chris Evans’ Lloyd Hansen getting his own standalone spinoff, but it’s interesting to hear the Russos mention episodic offerings, too. Netflix has never been shy in repeatedly confirming it wants a handful of shared universes that can’t be found anywhere else, and it looks to be Joe and Anthony leading that particular charge on two separate fronts.