Avengers: Endgame Directors New Film The Gray Man With Chris Evans Scores $20 Million In California Tax Incentives

Earlier this summer came the news that Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo had been tapped to direct a major new film for Netflix. The Gray Man will see them reunite with Captain America himself Chris Evans along with Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling for a blockbuster spy thriller. The new film just got some major good news for its production as Deadline reports the movie has scored a major tax credit through the California Film Commission to the tune of $20 million. This paints a big picture of what the film’s final tally could be which the trade points at being in the $200 million range, making it the most expensive Netflix original film of all time.

This tax credit for the film isn’t the largest incentive given to a production though as the Transformers film Bumblebee snagged a $22.4 million credit and Space Jam 2 which nabbed $21.8 million in credits. In any event, Netflix is spending a lot of money to get this film made and should it pay off it’ll likely span a franchise for the streaming platform.

Based on the book by Mark Greaney of the same name, Joe Russo penned the script which got a polish from Avengers: Endgame writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. Gosling stars in the film as freelance assassin and former CIA operative Court Gentry, who is hunted around the globe by former ally Lloyd Hansen (Evans). The current expectation is that Gosling will return for sequels after The Gray Man is released. The film is set to begin production in January.

“The intention is for it to be competitive with any theatrical and the ability to do with with Gosling and Evans is a dream for us,” Joe Russo previously said about the project. “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 characters gets burned by the CIA and Evans’ character has to hunt him down. We have a great working relationship with Netflix, and we go back almost 20 years with Scott Stuber. We formed AGBO to be an agnostic storytelling company, where we figure out the best platform. We think Netflix is the perfect place for this film.”

(Cover photo by Albert L Ortega/Getty Images)