Anthony Russo felt a close connection to Cherry

2 March 2021

Anthony Russo felt a personal connection to 'Cherry'.

Anthony and Joe Russo

The 51-year-old filmmaker helmed the drama movie – which stars Tom Holland as an opioid-addicted Army veteran and is based on Nico Walker's novel of the same name – with his brother Joe Russo and admits the plot hit him hard due to friends and family that had battled addiction.

Asked why he and his brother decided to direct the movie after working on 'Avengers: Endgame', Anthony explained: "I mean, fortunately we didn't really have too long to dwell on that question because that book was suggested to us while we were still in post-production on 'Endgame'.

"So before our brains were even really moving on much to thinking about life after 'Endgame', we read this book and it just hit us really hard when we read the book. We were dealing with a lot of relationships in our personal lives that had been really affected by the opioid epidemic.

"So we had people, friends and family who had suffered, friends and family that were struggling with recovery, even some who had died from overdose."

Anthony revealed that he felt many similarities to working on a Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film with 'Cherry' as both he and Joe needed to feel a connection to the story they were directing.

He told ComicBook.com: "It's interesting, I guess, because there's two layers to that experience that you're talking about. On one layer, there's not a whole lot that's different.

"Because again, even though Marvel is a bigger endeavour and there's more people involved and it's sort of connected to more ideas and films outside of the ones that you're doing, we can't really function as directors, as storytellers, unless we're making it very personal for ourselves. Because that's the only way we can sort of find meaning in what we're doing and find the motivation to craft the story."

Anthony continued: "So even though those movies were very big, they still were very personal to us, but that being said, you're right in that it's still different with 'Cherry' in the sense that there are no guidelines."