Avengers: Endgame Directors Would Be Interested In Taking Star Wars In New Directions

After directing the biggest movie of all time in the form of Avengers: Endgame, Anthony Russo and Joe Russo essentially have their pick of titles or franchises to work in. As they have been hard at work developing titles under their AGBO Films banner, they have also been building up a weekly series called Russo Brothers Pizza Film School, an online show where they are joined by their favorite actors and filmmakers to discuss some of their favorite films. Recently, Star Wars icon Mark Hamill joined the duo to discuss Empire Strikes Back and this week Thor: Ragnarok and The Mandalorian director Taika Waititi will be joining them. With all of this Star Wars on the brain, the Russo Brothers have had plenty of time to think about what direction they want to see Star Wars go, especially if they get involved with the franchise.

The Russo Bros. revealed during the Pizza Film School episode with Hamill (which is available on YouTube) that the original Star Wars films heavily influenced their efforts on Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Having previously said they would love to work on a Star Wars film if they find a shoe that fits, their idea for the franchise is something wholly original, more in line with what The Mandalorian is doing than going back to the Skywalker Saga.

‘I mean, I love the sandbox that [Jon] Favreau is playing in right now, and the timeframe that he’s exploring in the Star Wars universe,” Joe Russo told ComicBook.com. “I mean, obviously it was hugely important to us as kids and hugely important to our desire to become filmmakers. I don’t know that there’s particularly [a character]… I mean, I think a lot of the stories have been told that started with the original universe. I’d be interested in seeing completely new directions in the story and maybe new characters in a completely different time period would be really interesting.”

Now, having four Marvel movies under their belt, the team shares what they have learned about fillmmaking on their YouTube series. While the stories rooted in comics helped shape the narrative of their films, the structure of the films is more accurately compared to those of the original Star Wars movie.

“Comic books are inherently serialized, right? They’re traditionally cliffhangers at the end of every book to get to the next book,” Joe Russo explained. “Or if it’s not, it could be a cliffhanger, there’s certainly some loose threads. That structure isn’t always appropriate for a close ended movie, even when Marvel is serialized, you’re still trying to tell a complete story in that particular film. The one place where it was certainly applicable was Infinity War, which ended like any big event comic would, with a giant cliffhanger ending. I think there is some applications, or that structure is applicable sometimes, but not, but it’s not the same as… Comic books are very different.”

Waititi, the next Pizza Film School guest, already has a Star Wars movie of his own lined up. The next episode will be available on Friday, July 10.

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(Photo: Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Disney)