Joe Russo, co-director on upcoming Marvel movies Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, has said that his studio would be open to take another shot at making a game based on the Avengers. Speaking to Variety, Russo spoke about the studio where he, along with his brother, act as executive producers.
“We would definitely be open to it,” said Russo when asked if his studio, AGBO, would be open to a game based on Avengers or Amazon series Citadel.
“Right now, what we’re doing is creating new IP,” he continued. “At AGBO, we want to tell new stories. We want to tell new stories with new characters and new worlds that people haven’t seen before. So Anthony and I and Donald are working together to build out new worlds.
“And we have three that we’re currently working on that the intention is, for every world we build to have the scale and depth of a ‘Star Wars‘ universe, but in a different genre. And then we’ll build materials around those new worlds. We’ll tell stories in different ways using different media in those worlds.”
When asked about how the Russo brothers would continue to build out the gaming business at AGBO, especially with the upcoming release of Citadel.
“We have a new partner at the company who is one of the greatest game developers in history, Donald Mustard, he’s the creator of Fortnite, and he’s come in now to work with us on building out what we think the future of storytelling could be, which is, some hybrid between linear and virtual and gaming,” he said. “And we’re really interested in new ways to tell stories using technology.”
“And so the three of us together are trying to explore and ideate around what opportunities there could be over the next decade using new tools and new technology to tell stories and can we make it can we make it true transmedia, where the same assets that we’re using for CG in movies is also the same assets that are in the game, that are also the same assets in a virtual experience. And that’s the mission of AGBO currently, at the moment.”
Anthony Russo has also spoken about AGBO. Responding to a question about the platforms that the studio would focus on for its games, Russo said that its approach to development would be similar to how the brothers approach film making.
“We always call ourselves sort of film agnostic, which is, basically, we value all the different forms you can express yourself in linear cinema storytelling,” he said. “Same is true with games. Every idea has a different way that it can best be explored and best be brought to audiences or gamers for an experience. So we really like to tailor everything to the creative idea that we’re exploring, evolving and building upon, in terms of how we find an expression for it.”
The first game developed by AGBO will be based on Netflix’s The Electric State, which will be coming to Android and iOS on March 18.
The last major title based on the franchise was Crystal Dynamics’ Marvel’s Avengers. It featured a single-player story mode, but also placed quite a bit of emphasis on its co-op multiplayer mode that was structured to be a live-service game.
After a rocky launch and a series of patches that tried to alleviate problems while also bringing new content to the game, Marvel’s Avengers was ultimately delisted back in 2023. Among the additions to the game through post-launch updates were new heroes like Hawkeye and Black Panther.
Check out our review of Marvel’s Avengers from back when it first came out. The title used to be available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S before ultimately being delisted.