Russo brothers

• 1. Introduction

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  The Russo brothers directed Avengers: Endgame on a budget paid in part by student loans and credit cards. That credit card film came first. Before the billion-dollar box office receipts, before the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Anthony and Joe Russo were two kids from Cleveland, Ohio, who grew up watching movies and decided to make their own.

  Anthony J. Russo was born on the 3rd of February 1970. His younger brother Joseph Vincent Russo followed on the 18th of July 1971. Their father, Basil Russo, was an attorney and judge. Their mother is Patricia Gallupoli. Both families trace their roots to Italy, one branch from Sicily and the other from Abruzzo.

  All four Russo siblings, including sisters Gabriella and Angela, attended Benedictine High School in Cleveland. Joe then went to the University of Iowa, graduating in 1992 with a bachelor's degree in English. A professor nudged him toward acting by asking him to write and perform a monologue. Anthony studied English at the University of Pennsylvania.

  From that Ohio starting point, the two brothers would go on to become the third-highest-grossing directors of all time. The story of how they got there begins with a director named Robert Rodriguez and a film nobody expected them to make.

• 2. The Credit Card Film

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  Robert Rodriguez had made El Mariachi on a shoestring, and that fact lit something up for the Russo brothers. Anthony later told Deadline: "We were both in Cleveland and Robert Rodriguez had just made El Mariachi, and that inspired us. We were film buffs growing up, and his experience inspired us to make our own credit card film."

  They wrote, directed, and produced that first feature themselves. They called it Pieces, and they financed it through student loans and credit cards. Pieces debuted at the Slamdance Film Festival, the scrappy alternative to Sundance that showcases ultra-low-budget work.

  Steven Soderbergh saw the film there and described it as "insanely ambitious and dense." He added that he was "very activated by how activated they were" and observed plainly that "it was clear they were grinders." Over a lunch meeting, Soderbergh offered to produce their next feature.

  That next film was Welcome to Collinwood, a caper comedy with William H. Macy, Isaiah Washington, and Sam Rockwell in the cast. The brothers brought it to the Directors' Fortnight section of the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, one of the few American entries that year, and it closed the festival. One lunch with Soderbergh had placed them on one of cinema's most prestigious stages.

• 3. Television and Casting Instincts

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  FX Networks executive Kevin Reilly noticed what the Russo brothers had done with Welcome to Collinwood and hired them to direct the pilot for the series Lucky. Around the same time, director and producer Ron Howard hand-picked them to direct the pilot for Fox's Arrested Development.

  With Arrested Development, the brothers made a decision that studio executives resisted. They pushed to cast Jason Bateman as Michael Bluth, the lead character. The studio was skeptical. The brothers fought for the choice anyway, and the series ran from 2003 to 2005. In 2004, Anthony and Joe Russo won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for that pilot episode.

  Producer Dan Harmon, who hired the Russos to direct the pilot of his NBC sitcom Community, credited them with the idea to cast Donald Glover on the show. He called the brothers "geniuses in casting," praising their ability to spot talent based on character rather than industry status. The brothers directed 34 episodes of Community across its run from 2009 to 2014.

  Two of those episodes left a particular mark. "A Fistful of Paintballs" and "For a Few Paintballs More" served as the season two finale and drew wide critical acclaim. Alan Sepinwall of Uproxx described their installment as "nothing short of The Godfather Part II of sitcom episodes." That reputation for quality in an unlikely format was exactly what caught Marvel's attention.

• 4. Entering the Marvel Universe

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  Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige was watching. The Russos' track record with Arrested Development and Community brought them into contention for a Marvel feature. They were in the running against nine other directors when Captain America: The Winter Soldier became available.

  Joe Russo later explained that they were given the script and fell in love with the project. They built storyboards, rewrote scenes, and presented an animatic to Marvel to get the job. They cited The French Connection, Black Friday, Three Days of the Condor, and All the President's Men as the tonal and stylistic influences they pitched.

  The Winter Soldier arrived in 2014, starring Chris Evans as Captain America. It was the sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger, which Joe Johnston had directed in 2011. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly praised the film's handling of serious subject matter and compared it favorably to The Dark Knight from 2008. The film earned $714 million worldwide.

  Captain America: Civil War followed in 2016, and its success opened the door to the two largest projects the brothers would ever take on. Avengers: Infinity War, released in 2018, became the first superhero film to gross over $2 billion at the box office. Avengers: Endgame, released in 2019, earned $2.799 billion globally, briefly becoming the highest-grossing film of all time. With those two films, the Russo brothers joined James Cameron as the only directors to have made two films that each crossed the $2 billion threshold.

• 5. AGBO and Paying It Forward

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  In 2017, the brothers founded their independent production company, AGBO, with producing partner Mike Larocca. The following year, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the screenwriters behind all four of the Russo-directed Marvel films, joined AGBO as Co-Presidents of Story.

  The brothers articulated a specific mission for AGBO: to support emerging filmmakers and foster their creativity. They described it as paying forward the kind of mentorship that Soderbergh had extended to them years earlier. Two early examples of that support were Mosul (2019), the directorial debut of writer Matthew Michael Carnahan, and Relic (2020), the debut of director Natalie Erika James.

  Sam Hargrave had begun his career as Chris Evans' stunt double on Marvel films. The Russos elevated him to second-unit director, then backed his directorial debut with Extraction (2020), starring Chris Hemsworth. Joe Russo adapted the script from Ciudad, a graphic novel he had written with his brother and Ande Parks. Extraction went on to become the most-watched original film in Netflix's history at the time of its release.

  Another AGBO production took a very different path to recognition. Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, was produced under the AGBO banner. It became A24's highest-grossing film worldwide and won seven Academy Awards, including Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture.

• 6. Critical Reckoning

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  Cherry, released in 2021, marked the brothers' first attempt at drama as directors. The film was co-written by their sister, Angela Russo-Otstot, and starred Tom Holland as a war veteran with PTSD navigating the opioid epidemic. Anthony Russo said the subject was personal: the brothers have family members who have suffered and died from opioid addiction.

  Both Cherry and the Netflix action film The Gray Man (2022), starring Chris Evans, Ryan Gosling, and Ana de Armas, received negative reviews. The pattern continued. The Electric State (2025), a science-fiction action film starring Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt based on Simon Stålenhag's graphic novel, scored 14% on Rotten Tomatoes.

  Critic Lindsey Bahr of The Associated Press wrote that the film was "lacking a spark and a soul" and called it "kind of dull." Johnny Oleksinski of the New York Post characterized the brothers' directing work after Endgame as "some of the worst and priciest movies of the past six years." Separately, AGBO's Citadel series for Amazon, starring Richard Madden, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Stanley Tucci, drew criticism tied to its $300 million budget.

  Despite these receptions, The Electric State debuted at number one on Netflix's Top 10 in its opening week. Citadel was renewed for a second season, directed entirely by Joe Russo, set to premiere in 2026.

• 7. Return and What Comes Next

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  At San Diego Comic-Con in July 2024, Marvel Studios announced that the Russo brothers would return to direct the next two Avengers films. Avengers: Doomsday is scheduled for 2026. Avengers: Secret Wars follows in 2027. AGBO will co-produce both films, and filming began in late 2024.

  Outside of filmmaking, Joe Russo expanded into sports business. In January 2025, he was announced as a board member and investor in Sheffield United, an English football club taken over by the consortium COH Sports, led by Steve Rosen and Helmy Eltoukhy. Former Cleveland Cavaliers CEO Len Komoroski joined the board alongside Joe.

  On the 21st of February 2025, the Russo brothers received the handprint and footprint ceremony in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, joined by colleagues including Chris Pratt, Yvette Nicole Brown, and Alison Brie.

  The Extraction franchise remains active as well. A third Extraction installment was announced in 2023 and was set to begin production in 2025. The Netflix series Mercenary: An Extraction Series began filming in Ireland and Morocco in December 2025. The brothers who financed their first film on credit cards now have franchise infrastructure spanning two studios, and screenwriters Markus and McFeely remain with them at AGBO as the Doomsday production moves forward.