Russo Brothers Want to Direct More MCU Movies

Joe and Anthony Russo haven’t left the Marvel Cinematic Universe completely behind after wrapping up the huge amount of work they did on Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. In a new interview with SyFy Wire at the Toronto International Film Festival, they’ve been chatting about which Marvel Studios projects could see them return to direct a potential new blockbuster.

“I grew on up [John] Byrne’s X-Men run,” Joe Russo said. “Ben Grimm was a favorite character growing up, the Thing. And Fantastic Four is now in the Marvel fold. There’s a lot. Silver Surfer is an amazing character. Going really big in cosmic would be a lot of fun. So there’s a lot of things that could attract us.”

Joe went on to explain that after directing four MCU films, it’s been hard for the pair to leave the kind of stories they told at Marvel behind.

“I think after you go on the journey that we went on – because there is a comprehensive narrative, an overarching story from Winter Soldier all the way to the end of Endgame that involves Tony and Cap, through Civil War, through Infinity War – I think that scale of ambition in storytelling is a bug that’s bit us,” he said. “And we’re compelled to tell more stories on that scale, with that sort of years-long ambition to them.”

He went on to tease a return to the MCU in the future, albeit one that would take a considerable amount of time to unfold, as Marvel’s Phase 5 plans have not yet been announced in detail.

“I mean, look, working with Kevin [Feige] and Louis D’Esposito and Victoria Alonzo has been the most rewarding collaboration we’ve had in our entire career,” Joe explained. “They’re like family to us now. We’re all very, very close to one another, and we miss each other. So I’m sure we’ll find something that we can do together soon.”

The Russos were at TIFF to unveil their new war movie Mosul, which was shot in Arabic and focuses on an Iraqi police force fighting ISIS. It’s based on a New Yorker article from 2017 called “The Avengers of Mosul.”