The Russo brothers fired up a rainy SXSW London on Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n
AGBO co-founders Anthony and Joe Russo were joined by their partner, former chief creative officer at Epic Games Donald Mustard, at a headline session titled \u201cBuilding Artistic Universes Without Borders\u201d at the Shoreditch instalment of the major festival and conference event.<\/p>\n
More from The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n The directors of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame began by lauding the record-breaking box office work<\/a> of Obsession and Backrooms filmmakers, 26-year-old Curry Barker and 20-year-old Kane Parsons, who have become the latest cinematic saviors of horror<\/a>. \u201cIf you just follow your own ethos, I\u2019m fascinated by Obsession\u2026 [It\u2019s] viciously funny, right? In a very dark way, made for less than a million dollars, and will be the highest return ever for a movie,\u201d said Anthony Russo.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s an explosively disruptive moment\u2026 [The state of the film business] is in a very, very complicated place, but I think that\u2019s a good thing,\u201d Anthony Russo added. \u201cI think it\u2019s a good thing, because Gen Z are aging into becoming not only the dominant audience, but the dominant story today.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t long before, of course, they came onto the hotly anticipated Avengers: Doomsday, which is set to premiere this December. Anthony Russo said that even though after Endgame there was a strong sense of closure \u2014\u00a0and the men were admittedly \u201cexhausted\u201d after those seven years leading the franchise \u2014\u00a0it was an idea from writer Stephen McFeely that \u201creignited\u201d their desire to return to the MCU. \u201cHe came up with this creative idea that reignited [the project], and I can\u2019t talk about that creative idea, because it\u2019s the basis for Doomsday, but that [idea] all of a sudden broke the skies open for us, and we saw all new kinds of possibilities with that idea.\u201d<\/p>\n Joe Russo said that they\u2019re \u201cback to phase zero\u201d of the MCU with Doomsday and Robert Downey Jr. playing antagonist Dr. Doom: \u201cThat serial shifting and changing and surprising you and then reinventing itself and then shifting and changing and then surprising you \u2014\u00a0that\u2019s exciting and I think you\u2019re going to see some shifting and changing [with Doomsday]. So, get ready for it. Look, we were with Rob [Downey Jr.] earlier today. We were both talking about this concept that we are back to phase zero. This is starting over from scratch. We want to make sure everybody feels like this isn\u2019t leaning on anything from the past.\u201d<\/p>\n The filmmakers were asked by Variety co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh how they navigate working with such a huge \u2014\u00a0and star-spangled \u2014\u00a0ensemble cast. \u201cEach one of those actors is playing somebody\u2019s favorite character,\u201d replied Joe, \u201cand so if you\u2019re not going to search the character properly, then you\u2019re going to disappoint someone in that audience. We grew up in the biggest Italian family. \u2026 We understand how to tell stories with multiple characters. A lot of that has to do with very subtle POV shifts throughout the story,\u201d he added, \u201cIf Thor, when he lands, if that accidentally cuts [Sebastian] Stan\u2019s head off\u2026 That\u2019s how close those points of view are to each other, and that\u2019s all very calibrated, from a protocol standpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n The men were also asked about the other major titles from their portfolio, including the Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once and Netflix\u2019s The Gray Man, which became one of the streamer\u2019s most-watched films of all time. This prompted a rallying cry from Joe Russo, who was asked about making that Gray Man deal with Netflix instead of prioritizing a theatrical run.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to stop trying to [say] every story has to fit every medium, and that certain mediums are better than other mediums. This isn\u2019t true. Like, watch the story where you want to watch the story. You don\u2019t want to watch it at home? Go watch it on your computer, on your phone. It\u2019s your right to watch a story how you want to watch it. On YouTube, there\u2019s amazing filmmakers who\u2019ve been working in the phone format, who are now blowing up the box office,\u201d he said, referencing Barker and Parsons again.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all translatable at some point and there are tremendous assets to digital platforms with an incredible amount of diversity in digital,\u201d he continued, \u201cbecause they\u2019re more regionally focused and they\u2019ll do regional content, you know? There\u2019s real opportunities for regional filmmakers to get an opportunity to make something with some real financial acumen. All of this stuff should be embraced.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I think the part of the problem with culture today is everything\u2019s conflict-driven, because social media is conflict-driven, because that\u2019s what\u2019s sticky, that\u2019s what keeps you on social media. If you\u2019re happy, you\u2019re not on social media, you are out living your life. You\u2019re not worried about what other people are doing, you\u2019re not worried about what your neighbor said,\u201d said Joe. \u201cIf we don\u2019t stop attacking every step in our own sector\u2026 We\u2019re not going to have [anything] left, because we\u2019re going to go down some rabbit hole where everything is just neutral.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe one thing left that binds all of us is [telling] stories, and the more we can diversify those stories, the more we can democratize how those stories are told,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n SXSW London 2026 runs June 1-6.<\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Russo brothers fired up a rainy SXSW London on Tuesday afternoon. AGBO co-founders Anthony and Joe Russo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[268],"tags":[87278,434,223175,31494,223174,18,117,77126,30669,19,17,186309,5097,51042],"class_list":["post-515168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-avengers-infinity-war","tag-celebrities","tag-chief-creative-officer","tag-curry-barker","tag-donald-mustard","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-filmmakers","tag-hollywood-reporter","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kane-parsons","tag-robert-downey-jr","tag-russo-brothers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116682051281609013","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}