The Russo Brothers Begin a New Chapter with 21 Bridges
It was roughly 20 years ago when Steven Soderbergh viewed a film called Pieces at the Slamdance Film Festival and offered to produce the next project by its directors. Those filmmakers were Cleveland-born brothers Anthony and Joe Russo, and the picture Soderbergh helped shepherd for them was a comedy called Welcome to Collinwood.
One thing led to another, and the Russos were soon major producers and directors on television, working on shows like Arrested Development and Community. But it was in 2012 that their careers changed forever, as Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige picked them to direct 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a film that was a turning point for all involved--including the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The Russos returned for 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, the brothers’ first billion-dollar grosser, and that led to them getting the assignment to direct both Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and the sequel that eventually became this year’s Avengers: Endgame. We know what happened with those films, as both shattered box office records and the latter became the highest-grossing movie of all time.
The Russos have now leveraged their success into their own mini-studio called AGBO, bringing along collaborators like Chris Markus and Stephen McFeely--the screenwriting duo who wrote all four of the Russos’ Marvel entries--and many of the craftspeople they used on the MCU movies. The first project out of the gate is the new crime thriller 21 Bridges, starring Black Panther’s Chadwick Boseman as a lone cop who orders all the roadways in and out of Manhattan closed to catch a pair of cop killers.
Also coming from AGBO: a Russos-directed drama about the opioid crisis called Cherry; an action thriller called Dhaka; an adaptation by Markus and McFeely of a post-apocalyptic graphic novel called Electric State; a documentary on the longstanding rivalry between DC and Marvel Comics and other film, TV, and streaming projects. We touched on all of that when we sat down last weekend with the Russos while also discussing 21 Bridges, the Martin Scorsese debate, Endgame’s Oscar chances and more.
