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Joe and Anthony Russo would like you to know that they tried really, really hard not to make any more Avengers movies. They turned down Kevin Feige, head of Marvel Studios, whose latest studio Hail Mary has resembled, more and more, a real-life version of that 30 Rock gag about “making it 1997 again through science or magic.” (Except, in this case, it’d be more like 2019, when Marvel had swallowed the zeitgeist, and its attendant cash, pretty much whole.) They turned down Robert Downey Jr., who came to them, mask in hand, to ask them to help him recreate some of that Infinity War and Endgame magic with Doomsday and Secret Wars. There was only one being the Russos couldn’t deny when it came to them, begging them to stop making plans for The Gray Man 2 or Citadel: Des Moines or whatever and instead return to the Marvel machine: That beautiful, crazy dame called Story.

This is per a conversation that both brothers had with Omelete this week, in which they revealed that they’d straight-up turned Downey down when he approached them about directing the new movies, which are currently slated for May 1, 2026 and May 7, 2027 on Marvel’s schedule. (This, after Kevin Feige had apparently sold the actor himself on returning to the MCU.) “Robert tried to talk us into it, and we said no,” Joe Russo revealed. “We were resistant for a while.” That apparently only changed when Stephen McFeely—who co-wrote on all the Russos’ Marvel movies, plus The Gray Man and their recent, horrifically panned The Electric State—came to them with an idea. “And we went ‘That’s the story. That story has to be told.'”

Amusingly, the interviewers from Omelette remind the Russos that they had, back in 2020 or so, suggested they might take about five years off from Marvel before returning, co*ments the brothers don’t seem to have remembered making. (To be fair, they’ve been busy; in addition to directing a trio of movies that, sure, didn’t exactly set the box office on fire, they’ve been working with a bit more success as producers, including helping get Everything Everywhere All At Once made a few years back.) As to what the “really powerful story” that got them back entails, Joe Russo did toss out one little breadcrumb for the future (albeit, one anyone even half familiar with Doctor Doom could have easily predicted): “We love villains who think they’re the heroes of their own stories. That’s when they beco*e three-dimensional, and when they beco*e more interesting.”

[via Variety]