'Develop ideas without baggage': Russo brothers break down company's projects process

MANILA, Philippines — Brothers Anthony and Joe Russo first rose to prominence working on comedy shows "Arrested Development" and "Community" — with the movie "You, Me and Dupree" in between — before hitting mainstream popularity through the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The Russos directed the "Captain America" sequels "The Winter Soldier" and "Civil" which led to them helming "Avengers: Infinity War" and "Avengers: Endgame," the latter two in the Top 6 highest grossing films of all time.

Their early success and Marvel fame allowed the Russos to grow their own production company AGBO which started out on series like "Deadly Class" and "Larry Charles' Dangerous World of Comedy" and movies such as "21 Bridges," "Assassination Nation," and "Mosul."

The Russos through AGBO were co-producers on the 2023 Oscar Best Picture winner "Everything Everywhere All At Once," but lately AGBO has been thriving with projects that have appeared on streaming platforms.

AGBO produced the "Extraction" movies starring "Thor" actor Chris Hemsworth (Joe penned the scripts for both films) for Netflix, the Russos directed "Cherry" starring current "Spider-Man" actor Tom Holland for Apple TV+, and then helmed "The Gray Man" with Captain America himself Chris Evans for Netflix too.

The brothers' latest endeavor is the spy-thriller series "Citadel" starring Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra-Jones for Amazon Prime Video, yet another streaming platform that the Russos have worked with.

Philstar.com got the chance to talk to the Russos, including sister Angela Russo-Otstot who is AGBO's chief creative officer, and ask about how they treat their projects that go into streaming as compared to projects intended for theaters or cable television.

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Anthony explained that they set up AGBO in order to develop ideas and projects with complete independence.

"You know, we're financed well enough where we can support paying a range of artists and writers to develop things over a good period of time, until we feel like a project is ready to sort of speak out and find other partners," he continued. "And the reason why we do that is we want to develop every idea without any baggage about what it's supposed to be."

As a result every project, whether it's a series or a film, has the freedom to become what it wants to be and it is only then do the Russos consider which distributor or streamer is the best partner to bring a said project to audiences.

"You know, what is it about the nature of this project, the cost of the project, all kinds of factors. What kind of a partner is going to bring this? Is it better on streaming, is it better as a theatrical release, etc. And if so like which which studio as a theatrical, which streaming partner?" Anthony added.

Anthony expressed his and Joe's pride of AGBO for being able to set up such a system, compared to years ago when a creative would realize their project is at a company that doesn't really want it, "It can often kill a project; there's nothing more heartbreaking than that."

The filmmaker reiterated the freedom that AGBO gives their creatives to ensure projects go where they belong and to a company that wants, needs, and understands them and will help projects be everything in can be for audiences.

"We care about crafting good stories, finding the right partners out there in the marketplace to help bring this story to audiences. That can be anyone," Anthony ended.

"Citadel" was renewed for a second season before the series even debuted on Amazon Prime Video, which is also a bit of a gamble as the series' budget is said to be around $300 million (P16.7 billion).

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