Priyanka Chopra Jonas, robots, Robert Downey Jr. and more took center stage in London on Tuesday morning, as executives from AGBO, the independent studio led by artist brothers Joe and Anthony Russo, discussed upcoming series and film projects. Creative director Angela Russo-Otstot, the duo's sister, and marketing director Marian Koltai-Levine also shared insights on Citadel franchising and its upcoming extensions and much more.
AGBO has developed tentpole-focused entertainment universes that aim to reach global audiences through film, TV, games and virtual world experiences. Under the banner, the Russos have produced projects such as the Academy Award-winning Best Picture Everything, everywhere, all at onceby Amazon Citadeland Netflix Extraction films starring Chris Hemsworth, also directing films such as Apple's Tom Holland crime drama Cherry (2021), Netflix action movie The Gray Man (2022) and the upcoming sci-fi adventure The electrical state for Netflix.
The Russo brothers also recently agreed to return to Marvel Studios to direct not just one, but the next two Avengers film. Their sister company said Tuesday that the company has expanded and deepened its executive and creative team over the years, making this return to the Marvel Universe more of an organic step than a challenge for AGBO and its future.
“Creatively, what’s really interesting about this full-circle moment for them is that they started AGBO with a lot of wonderful lessons that they’ve learned over the 10 years that they’ve been at Marvel. And so they’ve brought those lessons to this company and used them as a foundation for the company,” he explained. “Over the last six years or so, the company has grown and evolved, and now we’re taking those lessons and bringing them back to this next initiative at Marvel. So, I think they’re better equipped with AGBO as producers because their creative process is so dependent on collaboration with each of the people in our company.”
AGBO executives are in London to meet the teams behind the upcoming Italian and Indian spin-offs of Amazon's hit series Citadelstarring Priyanka Chopra. Season two will begin production in London this fall, with Joe Russo directing. In the meantime, Citadel: Dianafilmed in Italy, will debut on October 10th, while Citadel: Honey Bunnyproduced in India, will debut on November 7.
And Chopra, along with Karl Urban, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Safia Oakley-Green and Vedanten Naidoo, also stars in The bluffwhich has just wrapped production in Australia. Set in the 19th century Caribbean, the film follows a former pirate who must protect her family when the mysterious sins of her past catch up with her.
“The story is loosely based on a real historical figure, but it's a female pirate, and it's a very gritty period. [story] and violent and all the things that most studies would say no to,” Russo-Ofstot said.
AGBO will release the film in March The electrical state on Netflix, which the Russo Bros. directed with a cast that includes the likes of Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt, Ke Huy Quan, Stanley Tucci, Jason Alexander, as well as the voices of Brian Cox, Anthony Mackie, Woody Harrelson, Jenny Slate and more. “It’s a wonderfully imaginative alternate history that takes place in the ’90s,” Russo-Otstot said. “It’s based on an illustrated novel by an artist [from Sweden] named Simon Stålenhag,” adapted by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. “They were the writers who did all four Marvel movies that Anthony and Joe directed. They work at our company as co-presidents of the story department. Christopher found this book on Facebook in a crowdfunding. And he said, there's a movie here. And so we optioned the book, and he and Stephen built a really rich mythology. There was an existing mythology in the book, but they expanded it.”
Praising the “incredible cast,” he called the film “a really interesting exploration of a world where service robots live alongside humans. As they perform specific services for humans, the robots begin to realize that they might want something more than the purpose they were given. [were made] for, and the humans start to fear him. So, eventually, there's a conflict. There's a war between the humans and the robots, and the humans use technology to win, and they take all the robots and banish them to an exclusion zone in the middle of a wasteland in the middle of the United States. But it's also a global conflict. So there are other stories and narratives that can take place in different countries around the world, but in this film we're seeing the story of the United States.”
On Tuesday, Koltai-Levine said that “Chris Pratt's sidekick is Anthony Mackie, which is a nice irony” for Marvel Universe fans.
Russo-Otstot also said that the robots in the film “have a real nostalgia to them,” adding that some of them are based on real brands. Woody Harrelson's robot character, for example, is Mr. Peanut in Rise of the Robots. And I remember when we had to approach Hormel to ask permission to do that. We were like, 'It's got to be Mr. Peanut. We've got to make this work.' And luckily, it worked.”
In early 2022, AGBO secured a $400 million investment from Japanese video game maker Nexon Co. in a deal that valued the company at $1.1 billion and gave Nexon a 38 percent stake. The company has also been working on a series of gaming titles, led by former Epic Games creative director Donald Mustard, now an AGBO partner.
Additionally, the company is looking for ways to utilize its creative and technological capabilities in innovative ways. “I love this opportunity that we’ve been afforded,” Russo-Otstot said. “Anthony, Joe and Donald separately have all had wonderful collaborations over the years with Robert Downey Jr., and Robert was supposed to do this comedy called Italian:which is in previews and opens Monday night at Lincoln Center.” It sees the star play a talented author who consistently finds himself in second place for the Pulitzer Prize and develops a fascination with artificial intelligence.
“Within the play, there's an exploration of the main character confronting an AI version of himself. He asked if our technical teams could build the digital asset that would represent him, and so we used our virtual production team to create a digital double that appears within the play” on a screen, Russo-Otstot explained. “It was a really fun little contribution to this incredible undertaking.”
He stressed that while the work is about an AI version of the author, AGBO did not create an AI version of Downey Jr. or his character, but rather a digital double of him.