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Disney’s Bob Iger Responds Enthusiastically to Endgame Directors Joining Star Wars
Disney CEO Bob Iger has a positive reaction to the notion of Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo moving on to direct a Star Wars film. The top-tier filmmakers in the MCU as of the moment, the directing duo boarded the franchise back in 2014 with Captain America: The Winter Soldier which elevated Steve Rogers' story to new heights. Due to a job well done, they were tapped to work on Captain America: Civil War in 2016 which had a much bigger cast than their previous film, and yet, they somehow made it work. With two solid contributions to the universe, there wasn't any question that the gig to wrap up The Infinity Saga was theirs.
Fast-forward to 2018 when the beginning of the culmination of the 22-film arc that the MCU has been treading since Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man in Avengers: Infinity War hit theaters and was generally well-received, everyone's anticipation for Endgame intensified. And with the revelation that they stuck the landing for the movie despite all odds following its roll out this weekend, many are looking forward to what they do next. And from the looks of it, they can easily nab a job at Lucasfilm to potentially direct a Star Wars project.
On the heels of Endgame's massive box opening haul of $1.2 billion, someone suggested on Iger on Twitter to get the Russos for the beloved space opera. And while the Disney executive didn't say anything concrete about planning to hire the pair for Star Wars, Iger did say that he loves them. Whether or not that's an indication for the Russos' future in the galaxy far, far away remains to be seen. But it does help knowing that someone who has that kind of executive power like the work that they do.
Assuming that the Russos eventually join Star Wars, they will follow a couple of MCU directors who have also worked on the beloved galactic saga. Jon Favreau, who kicked off Marvel Studios' interconnected franchise with Iron Man, and Thor: Ragnarok's Taika Waititi are both involved with The Mandalorian - a high-production TV series for Disney+. But of course, while no one's discrediting the work that the Russos did in the MCU, it's also worth noting that a huge part of their success is their team-up with writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely who wrote all their films in the franchise.
At this point, several of the upcoming Star Wars films do not have directors attached (David Benioff & D.B. Weiss are only writing and producing their series). But with the looming break for the franchise after J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, it might take a while before fans see a Russo-helmed film from that franchise. That said, it doesn't mean that work on developing new shows and films stop. With the directing duo leaving the MCU, they're set to focus on some of their other projects like true-life drama Cherry where they will reunite with Tom Holland, so Iger and Lucasfilm may want to lock them down as early as possible. If anything, they've been vocal about wanting to direct a picture set in the galaxy far far away so it might not be that difficult to recruit them.
Star Wars 9 / Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) release date: Dec 20, 2019
