Ryan Gosling Will Be Russo Brothers’ Gray Man, Chris Evans Will Be Their Other Man

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Four years after Ryan Gosling jazz hands’d his way back into our hearts in La La Land, the hunk returns: According to Deadline, Gosling will lead Joe and Anthony Russo’s adaptation of the Mark Greaney spy novel The Gray Man. Chris Evans will co-star. The movie will be Netflix’s most financially ambitious movie to date. Per Deadline: “The intention here is to create a new franchise with a James Bond level of scale and a budget upward of $200 million.�

The Gray Man book series followed Court Gentry, a freelance assassin and former CIA operative. Brad Pitt was set to star with James Gray directing in 2011; in 2015, post–Mad Max: Fury Road, the role was to be retooled for Charlize Theron. In the Russo’s movie, Gentry (Gosling) is pursued across the globe by former CIA colleague Lloyd Hansen (Evans). Anthony Russo compared it to the brothers’ work on Captain America: Winter Soldier. “The movie is a real mano a mano between those two great actors who represent two different versions of the CIA, in what it can be, and what it can do,� he told Deadline. “For those who were fans of Captain America: Winter Soldier, this is us moving into that territory in more of a real-world setting. That’s what this movie really means for us.� The movie will start shooting in January in Los Angeles.