Netflix and the Russo Brothers seem to be onto something good together. Extraction, written by Joe Russo, was a massive hit on the streamer, and now it looks like the brothers’ co-directed film The Gray Man will be one as well. With a positive audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and the movie debuting at number one in 92 countries on Netflix, the streamer has greenlit not only a The Gray Man sequel from the Russos but also an R-rated spinoff.
In an interview with Deadline, the brothers revealed that they would be returning to direct the sequel alongside Ryan Gosling coming back as the titular Gray Man. Stephen McFeely, who co-wrote the first screenplay, will be writing this one on his own, but the Russo Brothers say that they’ll once again be taking heavy inspiration from the book series the movies are based on. Although, it isn’t clear which of the dozen novels they’ll be working from. “The sequel will be inspired by the Mark Greaney novel,” said Joe Russo. “Translating from one medium to another often requires interpretation, but we have an incredible amount of source material from an amazing offer. We’ll draw on that for the sequel.”
The Gray Man spinoff movie has even fewer details. All of the books feature Gosling’s character, Court Gentry, so it would probably be something wholly original. The Gray Man spinoff will be written by Deadpool and Zombieland writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese and be “a little more edgy and experimental” while receiving a “hard R” rating. There’s plenty of ways to go with a spinoff series as Gosling’s character was one of a group of elite spies, but Ana de Armas, who stars in the first film as well, is really hot right now. So they could also be trying to develop her character into its own thing.
The Gray Man is currently streaming on Netflix.
