Joe and Anthony Russo are assembling a team — once again.
The Russo Bros. are in early talks to return to Marvel Studios to direct not just one, but the next two Avengers movies, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.
The hiring ends a months-long, high stakes search by the studio for filmmakers to oversee the fifth and sixth Avengers movies. Multiple names were in contention, including Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy, who was offered the gig. Sources say the talks are in the early stages.
The move also marks a homecoming for The Russos, who jumped from the world of TV comedy on shows like Arrested Development and Community to blockbuster movies a decade ago, with Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014). In total, they directed four of Marvel’s biggest and best regarded movies, going on to helm Captain America: Civil War (2016), Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019). Combined, their Marvel films grossed $6.681 billion, with Endgame standing as the No. 2 movie of all time globally with $2.79 billion.
In the years since, they have become mega-producers via their AGBO banner, producing best picture winner Everything Everywhere All at Once and pricey titles such as Amazon’s Citadel and Netflix’s Extraction movies. As directors, after becoming box office kings at Marvel, they stuck to streaming titles that did not reach the critical and cultural heights of their Marvel work, directing the Tom Holland crime drama Cherry (2021) for Apple and the big budget action movie The Gray Man (2022) at Netflix. They also directed the upcoming sci-fi adventure The Electric State for Netflix.
The fifth Avengers movie was previously titled Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, and was to star Jonathan Majors as time-traveling villain Kang. But Marvel cut ties with the actor after he was convicted of assault in harassment in December. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton was once attached to direct Kang Dynasty, but he departed a month before Majors’ conviction. The feature is expected to get a new name and a new focus.
The sixth Avengers film is Secret Wars, which is a storyline the Russos have long talked about wanting to adapt. A pair of 1980s comic book series focused on an all powerful antagonist known as the Beyonder, who in the first installment pitted Marvel’s heroes and villains against each other on a planet known as Battleworld. A 2015 revival served as the climax to writer Jonathan Hickman’s own multiverse saga, which has already had elements referenced in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). In Hickman’s Secret Wars, all of Marvel’s multiverses are destroyed, with remnants surviving on a single planet ruled by the villain Doctor Doom.
Avengers 5 is set for May 1, 2026 and Secret Wars is set for May 7, 2027.
The Russo Bros. are repped by CAA.