Netflix has announced that its upcoming feature film The Gray Man will be directed by Anthony and Joe Russo – the men behind Avengers: Endgame – with Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans in the lead. The film is set to be Netflix’s most expensive movie yet with a budget of $200 million as reported by Deadline.
The idea behind the project is to create a new franchise with a budget and scale similar to that of James Bond.
The spy thriller will show Gosling playing a titular assassin/former spy named Court Gentry and Evans as Lloyd Hansen – his nemesis CIA agent who is tasked to hunt Court down. The Gray Man is based on Mark Greaney’s series of 10 books (and counting) with the same name.
Speaking about the film, Joe Russo stated:
The idea is to create a franchise and build out a whole universe, with Ryan at the center of it. We have all committed to the first movie, and that’s got to be great to get us to the second movie. These are master assassins, and Gosling’s character gets burned by the CIA and Evans’ character has to hunt him down,
While overseas locations are still being finalised for The Gray Man, shooting is expected to begin in Los Angeles in January 2021.
Evans took to Instagram to mark the fifth project he will be pursuing with the Russo Brothers:
The Gray Man marks the second project for Joe Russo after the record shattering original movie Extraction starring Chris Hemsworth and Randeep Hooda. A sequel for the movie has been confirmed too. If you haven’t caught the first one yet, here’s the trailer:
Also read: Absentia season 3: Amazon Prime Video’s psychological action thriller is back