‘Avengers: Endgame’ Directors Joe & Anthony Russo Say A ‘Secret Wars’ Film Could Be Biggest Ever For MCU
Joe Russo and Anthony Russo might not be done with the Marvel Cinematic Universe just yet, but all the stars would have to align for their return. While the directing duo has noted before that they are stepping away from Marvel Studios for the time being, it looks like they’d consider coming back if Secret Wars was in the works. The brothers directed four of the most successful MCU movies to date, including the highest-grossing movie of all-time, 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. In a new interview with BroBible, the Russos admitted Secret Wars could be even bigger than the fourth Avengers flick.
Joe said he remembered reading the comic-book story when he was 10 or 11 years old and recalled being fascinated with the scale of it all. The Secret Wars series had two releases, one in 1984 and another more recently in 2015. The original had a big-bad named the Beyonder who teleported many of Marvel’s most famous heroes and villains to a planet in another galaxy to battle against one another. The source material had more characters by far than Endgame, with a cast that consisted of original Avengers, X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and solo heroes like Spider-Man.
“[Anthony] and I like complicated relationships between heroes and villains, we like villains who believe they’re heroes in their own stories, so it’s all sort of built into this notion of Secret Wars. To execute something on the scale of Infinity War was directly related to the dream of Secret Wars, which is even larger in scale,” Joe remarked.
“It would be the biggest movie you could possibly imagine, so that’s what really excites us about the story — the ambition of it is even bigger than the ambition of the Infinity Saga,” Anthony added.
It took Marvel Studios more than 10 years to bring Endgame together, so if the Secret Wars storyline is on the backburner, fans shouldn’t expect it for possibly another decade. Rushing a movie of that scale into theaters would be a massive mistake, one studio head Kevin Feige is unlikely to make. For now, there are only two confirmed phases moving forward, four and five.
Fans are awaiting the announcement of X-Men and Fantastic Four films now that they are finally back under the Marvel umbrella. These characters’ origin stories would have to be told before a Secret Wars movie could be made, but their debuts have no dates attached to them at this time.
