Marvel directors the Russo brothers: 'The Avengers films were a powerful political tool, at the right time'

The men behind the highest-grossing films of all time on how superheroes can instruct world leaders, and changing direction to make a bleak experimental opioid drama - starring Spider-Man

Where do you go after you have just directed the highest grossing movie in history and your past three movies brought in a combined haul of $6bn? Only two people have had to grapple with this question. Joe and Anthony Russo have spent nearly a decade immersed in the Marvel universe, weaving together a tangle of plot strands, marshalling an enormous cast, staging ever more spectacular action scenes, and bringing the whole saga in to land against gale-force headwinds of expectation.

As well as the concluding Avengers Endgame and Infinity War, the Russos directed Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and Captain America: Civil War (2016), the latter of which introduced Chadwick Boseman's Black Panther and Tom Holland's Spider-Man. On the one hand, you could say they have won Hollywood, but now they face the challenge of life after Marvel, which could be even tougher.