The Russo Brothers have confirmed ‘The Gray Man’ will launch a franchise.
Joe and Anthony Russo
The directing duo, Joe and Anthony Russo, are set to helm the big-budget spy film for Netflix with Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans at the top of the casting list, and they have now revealed the movie won’t “answer every question” audiences might have, because they want to leave room for future instalments.
Joe said: “What we’re doing on ‘Gray Man’ that’s different [is] … we’re not gonna answer every question in the first movie. This is being conceived as a series of films, and again, potentially branching out, we could follow other characters, but we’re not gonna answer every question in the movie.
“So you’re gonna finish the movie, [and] have a complete story, but you’re still gonna have questions about the wider universe. And I think that’s one way to break the model a little bit, is to not give the audience everything in one film. Don’t have a close-ended narrative. Have an open-ended narrative that’s [like] a chapter in a book.”
The action thriller follows a former CIA operative turned freelance assassin named Court Gentry (Ryan Gosling) - who is also known as the Gray Man - who is hunted across the globe by his former CIA cohort Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans).
And the Russo Brothers also confirmed they’re due to start filming in January, with work taking place in Los Angeles and in Europe.
Joe added: "[We're] guys who grew up on a steady diet of action thrillers. The cast is exceptional, the script is excellent.
“We start shooting at the end of January here in Los Angeles, and then we have some work overseas in Europe after that in the spring.”
Despite having plans for a franchise in mind, the brothers might not helm any future sequels themselves, because they know their hectic schedules might not allow them to do so.
Speaking to Collider, Joe said: “It could be other filmmakers. I mean we love it, we love what we’ve been prepping, we love the cast, but we’d love to tell multiple stories and schedule-dependent, we might not be able to handle everything. So we love to bring new voices in and we also get excited about that."
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