Joe and Anthony Russo know a thing or two about working within the confines of a cinematic universe, having boarded Kevin Feige’s monolithic franchise for Captain America: The Winter Soldier before going on to helm Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. They’re the only filmmakers to have directed four installments in the MCU, and you can guarantee they’ve picked up more than a trick or two.
The sibling duo have a packed slate at the moment, with Tom Holland’s potential awards season contender Cherry arriving in a couple of weeks, while production on Netflix’s $200 million espionage blockbuster The Gray Man begins next month. One of the more interesting projects on their calendar, though, without a doubt is Disney’s live-action Hercules remake.
As things stand, the Russos are only producing and helping to develop the script alongside Wonder Woman 1984 writer Dave Callaham, but you don’t rope in the brains behind the biggest movie in history without giving them a serious amount of creative freedom. In fact, in a new interview, Joe Russo teased that the Mouse House want Hercules to provide the launchpad for a decade’s worth of storytelling, which only gets more interesting the longer you think about it.
“It is still in development, the script is about to come in a week. We’ve taken a lot of time and care with it. They want to see something really cool that they wanna get lost in it for a decade, so that’s our mission is to provide them with that experience.”
The live-action remake train isn’t slowing down anytime soon, with fifteen theatrical and Disney Plus releases in development, but Russo saying that Disney want to get lost in it for a decade could mean any number of things. It might mean Hercules is being designed as the first installment in a franchise, or that spinoffs could spring from the main story, or even the possibility that it could connect to other films somehow and form a whole new cinematic universe. For now, details are being kept firmly under wraps, but with the script almost finished, we should be getting some big updates soon in terms of talent.