If They Return to Marvel, The Russos Want a Movie Series, Not TV

Despite Marvel's seeming focus on Disney+ series, and the fact that they (at least in theory) provide filmmakers with the opportunity to tell a six-or-more-hour mega-narrative all at once, the filmmakers behind Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame aren't so into it. It seems that, at least to them, part of the appeal of doing the long-running tale that started with Captain America: Winter Soldier and culminated with Endgame was the unique ability that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has to integrate other stories into the narrative along the way -- something that would be mostly lost if you were making a single season of TV that dropped at the rate of an episode per week when there were no other movies in theaters.

During an interview with SyfyWire, because the filmmakers will never be able to talk about anything other than Marvel movies again, they were quizzed on what might bring them back to the Mouse House of Ideas while out on a press tour in support of the new film Mosul, which they produced. They specifically cited the "years-long ambition" of their recent project as a big part of what they want to do going forward.

"I think after you go on the journey that we went on -- because there is a comprehensive narrative, an overarching story from Winter Soldier all the way to the end of Endgame that involves Tony and Cap, through Civil War, through Infinity War — I think that scale of ambition in storytelling is a bug that's bit us," he said. "And we're compelled to tell more stories on that scale, with that sort of years-long ambition to them."

While it might be difficult to imagine anybody else having the same kind of long game that Marvel does, there have been outliers. There are plenty of other people building cinematic universes who might like help from the directors of the highest-grossing movie of all time, for a start -- and beyond that, you have people like Richard Linklater and Michael Apted constantly pushing the envelope by undertaking weird, little independent films that take decades to finish.

Spider-Man: Far From Home is still in theaters, and Avengers: Endgame was just made available on Blu-ray, DVD, and SVOD. Upcoming Marvel Studios projects include Black Widow on May 1, 2020, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier in Fall 2020, The Eternals on November 6, 2020, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings on February 12, 2021, WandaVision in Spring 2021, Loki in Spring 2021, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness on May 7, 2021, What If…? in Summer 2021, Hawkeye in Fall 2021, and Thor: Love and Thunder on November 5, 2021.