Marvel-lous: How the Russo brothers broke through into the big time

Their Marvel films generated $7bn. Now Anthony and Joe Russo’s wham-bam Netflix thriller ‘The Gray Man’ is breaking records with a reported budget of $200m. But, says Geoffrey Macnab, it wasn’t always the case when they started out making indie films financed on credit cards

Ryan Gosling as Six in the Russo brothers Netflix film ‘The Gray Man’ (Paul Abell/Netflix)

The Gray Man, in cinemas this week before coming to Netflix on 22 July, is the most expensive movie in the streaming giant’s history. It’s the Russo brothers’ latest extravaganza with a reported budget of $200m (£170m); a wham-bam thriller starring Ryan Gosling as the James Bond-like CIA assassin Agent Sierra Six and Chris Evans, best known as Captain America, as the uber-villain trying to kill him. There are explosions, fights and chases, many involving the gun-toting Ana De Armas, forever leaping out of the shadows to save Gosling’s life. The new film follows on from the brothers’ four Marvel blockbusters, which generated billions of dollars at the box office. Adapted from Mark Greaney’s first Gray Man novel, it’s expected to spawn yet another franchise, possibly one to rival that of The Avengers, albeit in the action sphere rather than in the world of superheroes.

It’s a measure of how far the Russos have come that you now expect them to make films on such an enormous scale. It wasn’t always like this. When they started their career 25 years ago with an eccentric low-budget flick about three manic Italian brothers who run a hairpiece business in Cleveland, Ohio, they were scrimping and saving.

Pieces (1997) was one of those unsung US indie films financed on credit cards that, as one critic wrote at the time, would “disappear or go straight to video” if it wasn’t for the limited exposure it was given at obscure film festivals.