Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans will star in The Gray Man, a new thriller movie directed by Joe and Anthony Russo that will carry Netflix’s biggest budget yet.
The movie is based on the Gray Man and Court Gentry book series from author Mark Greaney. The globe-trotting movie focuses on two killers, Gentry (Gosling) and his former companion Lloyd (Evans), as they hunt each other down.
The movie is meant to kickstart a franchise with this first installment written by Joe Russo. Captain America and Avengers writers, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, also helped out with the script.
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Anthony Russo compared the movie to Captain America: The Winter Soldier in an interview with Deadline.
“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 said their intention is to go on for multiple installments and to keep the stakes, and probably the budget, very high. This movie is expected to have Netflix’s highest budget yet at around $200 million. For comparison, a movie like The Irishman reportedly cost around $175 million and Extraction was under $100 million.
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“The intention is for it to be competitive with any theatrical and the ability to do with with [sic] Gosling and Evans is a dream for us,” Joe Russo said. “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 characters gets burned by the CIA and Evans’ character has to hunt him down.
“We think Netflix is the perfect place for this film.”
Joe Russo also said that the movie will hopefully begin production by late 2020 or early 2021, but that’s “COVID dependent.”
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This movie was originally set up with the Russo Brothers at Sony right after the release of Winter Soldier and before the Russo brothers helmed the biggest box office hit of all time. Even before that, Brad Pitt and his Ad Astra director, James Gray, were reportedly going to film The Gray Man.
This is the second big franchise for the Russo brothers at Netflix. Extraction was recently crowned on Netflix’s list of their biggest opening months for original movies. About half of all Netflix accounts worldwide tried out Extraction in its first month. A sequel is reportedly on the way.
Netflix has been pumping out big projects throughout July, including the recently-released The Old Guard and the upcoming Transformers TV series.
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Petey Oneto is a freelance writer for IGN who thinks Winter Soldier and Civil War are the best MCU movies so far.
Source: IGN.com Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans Will Star in Russo Brothers Netflix Film