Anthony and Joe Russo like to grow up.
In the 2018 Avengers: Infinity War, the director’s brothers shocked fans when they wiped out half of the world’s population and failed Marvel’s superhero. The following year, they raised their stakes in the three-hour “Avengers: Endgame.” The film earned $ 2.79 billion in global box office revenue, the second highest ever.
And now there’s the Netflix movie The Gray Man, which they wrote, directed and produced. The streaming service provided them nearly $ 200 million and traveled around the world, causing Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans to portray the CIA’s shadow employees trying to kill each other.
“It almost killed us,” Joe Russo said of the shoot.
It took a month to create one action sequence. It included a large gun, a tram car running through Prague’s Old Town district, and Mr. Gosling fighting an army of assassins while handcuffed on a stone bench. It’s one of those short puppies that cheer the audience. The production cost at that moment was about $ 40 million.
“It’s a movie in a movie,” said Anthony Russo.
The Gray Man, which will be released in some theaters this weekend and on Netflix on Friday, is the most expensive movie on the streaming service and the biggest bet to create a spy franchise in the James Bond style. Unable to carry out the mission. “If that works, Russos has plans to expand the world of’Greyman’with additional films and television series, as Disney did in the Marvel and Star Wars franchise.
But these franchises, supercharged by streaming and essential to Disney +’s ambitions, are, first and foremost, theater companies. “Greyman” is being screened in 450 theaters. This is far from 2,000 or so, so a typical big budget release will appear on the first weekend. The movie is also available on Netflix at about the same time, so most viewers can watch the movie on this service. Movies released by Netflix in theaters are usually left much faster than traditional studio movies.
“If you’re trying to build a franchise, why start a franchise with a streaming service?” A professor at the University of Virginia Darden Business School, how media and entertainment trends, especially consumer habits, change. I asked Anthony Palomba, who is studying.
The movie is at a critical time for Netflix, which will announce its second-quarter earnings on Tuesday. Much of the industry expects results to be even darker than the company’s April forecast of 2 million subscriber losses. The company’s first-quarter earnings will lead to a plunge in stock prices, after which it will fire hundreds of employees and announce that it will create a cheaper subscription hierarchy featuring commercials, cracking down on password sharing between friends. The family said there was.
Despite the current rough patch, Netflix’s deep pockets and hands-on approach to creative decisions make Netflix the only studio that could rival Russia’s quest for ambition and autonomy. I did.
“It would have been a dramatically different movie,” Joe Russo mentioned the possibility of making “The Gray Man” in another studio like Sony, which was originally planned to be produced. The brothers said they needed to cut one-third of their budget and downgrade movie action to go elsewhere.
Someone who knows the deal with Sony said the studio is willing to pay $ 70 million to make a movie. Instead, Russia sold it to Netflix under a contract that allowed Sony to recover the development costs and receive a fee for the time it took to manufacture it. Sony declined to comment.
Anthony Russo said the film contains nine important sequence of actions, including emergency flares, fire extinguishers, and fighting enemies with Gosling’s parachute that fell from a bombed plane.
“Ambition is high,” said Joe Russo. “And it’s dangerous.”
Netflix can pay more upfront, even in this humble moment, if it doesn’t bear the costs associated with a much larger theatrical release. Also, for Scott Stuber, head of Netflix’s global film that shed light on the Bourne Identity franchise while at Universal Pictures, films like The Gray Man joined the company five years ago. I have been trying to make it since then.
“We haven’t participated in this genre yet,” Stuber said in an interview. “If you’re going to do that, you’ll want to trade with the filmmakers who have created some of the biggest franchises and the biggest action films in our business in the last decade.”
Russos is also producing a sequel to Netflix’s “Extraction” with Chris Hemsworth, who funded Netflix’s next directorial venture, the $ 200 million sci-fi action movie “The Electric State,” with Millie Bobby Brown. Chris Pratt.
Stuber pointed out the sequel to “Extraction” and the spy movie “Heart of Stone” starring Gal Gadot. Both are due out next year, proof that the company is still struggling and still undergoing major changes. However, he admitted that recent business realities have forced the company to think more deeply about the projects it has chosen.
“We’re not crazy about spending, but we’re reducing it,” he said. “We strive to be more thoughtful.”
He added: “We have been a volume business for a long time, and now we are very specific about targeting.”
Niija Kuykendall was hired by Warner Bros. at the end of last year and focused on producing $ 40- $ 50 million mid-budget films that traditional studios had mostly abandoned due to low potential box office revenues. I oversaw a new department to win. .. And Stuber points out two upcoming films, Pain Hassler, a $ 50 million thriller starring Emily Blunt, Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron’s untitled romantic comedy, as examples of the company’s commitment to movies of that size. Did.
In recent months, Netflix has been criticized by some in the industry for how much it costs to sell individual movies, or how much it costs. Despite significant competition from services such as Disney + and HBO Max, its marketing budget remained basically the same for three years. Creators often wonder if Netflix’s marketing power is at its best, or if they only get two Sunset Boulevard signs.
For “Greyman”, Netflix sent Russia and its cast to Berlin in London and Mumbai in India. Other promotional activities include national television advertising during the National Basketball Association’s games, and Indianapolis 500 and 3D billboards in different locations such as Las Vegas and Krakow, Poland.
“It’s very large,” Joe Russo said of Netflix’s “The Gray Man” promotion. “We are on a world tour to promote it. The actors go with us. It’s very similar to the work we did to promote the Marvel movie.”
For small theatrical releases, Netflix will place “Greyman” in some of the few theaters it owns, such as the Paris Theater in New York and the Bay Theater in Los Angeles, and will set up chains such as the Cinemac and Marcus Theaters. Even though Joe Russo calls “The Gray Man” a “movie that forgets to eat popcorn,” Netflix doesn’t disclose box office revenue.
The theater side of the movie business is a challenge for Netflix. The desire for risk in a studio is often greater than in a traditional studio because it costs less to put a movie in a theater and you don’t have to worry about box office revenue. On the contrary, the lack of large-scale theatrical release has long been a headache, as filmmakers want to show their creativity on the largest screen possible and build a buzz with the audience. did.
And the box office revenues of movies such as “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Minions: The Rise of Guru,” and “Everything Everything Everything All at Once” (produced by Russosu) have prompted many to rethink in recent months. I did. The influence of the cinema where the pandemic was severely hindered.
Stuber acknowledged that while his goal was to increase his presence in the theater, he needed a consistent supply of films that could connect with audiences around the world.
“That’s what we’re aiming for. Is there a consistently sufficient number of movies where we can enter the market?” He said.
Netflix also needs to consider how long the movie will be shown exclusively in the theater before appearing on the service. The “Gray Man” theater has a very short time frame, but Russos wants the movie to show that Netflix can be the type of home where the brothers can delight the famous big-budget audience.
“Ultimately, we not only know that there is a distribution platform that can attract 100 million viewers as in the case of’extraction’, but also a big theater with a commensurate promotional campaign behind it. It could be a window, “says Joe Russo. There is a very powerful studio. “
