Joe Russo, co-director and producer ofAvengers: Infinity WarandAvengers: Endgamewith his brotherAnthony, recently shared some updates on a few of the highly-anticipated projects they currently have in development at AGBO. Speaking with Collider’s Steve Weintraub in an exclusive conversation about the upcoming Netflix movieExtraction, Russo teased some details about the current status of their live-action adaptation of the 1977 animated seriesBattle of the Planets, as well asan animated seriesbased onMagic: The Gatheringfor Netflix anda series adaptationofGrimjackfor Amazon.
“It’s not going to be a direct adaptation of the series,” Russo said ofBattle of the Planets. “It’s going to be our own story that we tell surrounding a group of genetically altered kids who are involved in a space war… That could take months of gestating, and trying to figure out what the new mythology is. And then we commit that to a bible, and then from that bible we do some artwork as exploration, and once we have artwork that we’re inspired by we then commit that to a script. So we’re in the bible phase forBattle of the Planetsat the moment.”
Battle of the Planetswas an Americanized version of a Japanese cartoon series titledScience Ninja Team Gatchaman, about a team of young fighters called G-Force tasked with defending Earth from intergalactic enemies. It was not dissimilar from Voltron, in that G-Force flew one giant spaceship that contained several smaller, equally righteous vehicles. It’ll be interesting to see what the Russos’ take on the series ends up being, but blockbuster space battles seem firmly within their wheelhouse.
Meanwhile,Grimjack, based on the sci-fi / fantasy comic book series about a trans-dimensional mercenary, is currently in the script phase, with Russo calling the script “fantastic” and indicating that it has been submitted to Amazon for notes. Finally, he reveals thatMagic: The Gathering, the animated series based on the popular collectible card game published by Wizards of the Coast, is also in the script phase. However, he notes that animation has a much longer prep period than live-action projects, which means we probably won’t see the series anytime soon. Check out Russo’s comments in the video below.
Finally,here’s Joe Russo talkingabout a possibleCommunitymovie,here’s what Russo had to sayabout Tom Holland’s work inCherry, andhere’s his updateon the next three films he’s doing with his brother Anthony.
