Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling are all set to face-off in a new Netflix thriller film, which seems like the most expensive Netflix Original till date. The production titled The Gray Man will be based on the bestseller series by Mark Greaney and will be conceived by the brains behind Avengers: Endgame.
The writers and directors behind the Marvel Studios movie are set to bring The Gray Man to the streaming giant.
The big wigs have committed more than $200 million to the project. The project will see Evans opposite Gosling as his character’s arch-nemesis, reports Deadline.
The astronomical figure is significant given the fact that it will mark the first time in Netflix’s history that the streaming giant will finance a production of this scale.
Gosling, 39, will star as an ex-CIA operative, Court Gentry, who has since become a gun-for-hire while Evans, also 39, plays Gentry’s former colleague, Lloyd Hansen, who will be pursuing the former. According to co-writer and co-director Joe Russo, the duo are master assassins, and Gosling’s characters gets burned by the CIA while Evans’ character has to hunt him down.
The Gray Man will be written and directed by brothers Joe and Anthony Russo, who have earlier worked with Evans on Captain America: The Winter Soldier in 2014.
The Gray Man is to be produced by Russo brothers’ production arm, AGBO, and the action thriller is expected to carry a Jason Bourne-meets-James Bond mashup.
“The movie is a real mano a mano between those two great actors who represent two different versions of the CIA, in what it can be, and what it can do,” Anthony Russo told Deadline. “For those who were fans of ‘Captain America: Winter Soldier,’ this is us moving into that territory in more of a real-world setting. That’s what this movie really means for us.”
A revived project
The original Gray Man project reportedly began its development some years back at New Regency with Brad Pitt and James Gray tied to the project at the time. However, the project stalled and the Russos swooped in and have been quietly developing it for years hoping to even turn it into a franchise, suggest reports.
Confirming the hopes of creating a franchise, Joe Russo said,
“The intention is for it to be competitive with any theatrical, and the ability to do it with Gosling and Evans is a dream for us. 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.”
Acknowledging Netflix as the “perfect” platform for the thriller, Russo said:
“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.”
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