The Gray Man directors Joe and Anthony Russo say Dhanush inspired combat scenes in their Marvel movies

“It was interesting that while we were working on the Marvel movies, we would research action sequences from other films as inspiration and look for ideas. We have a very good stunt team that we have worked with for years and everyone brings ideas to the table. A lot of times, we’d look at clips from other movies. I noticed that we would see a lot of clips of Dhanush in action,” he said. Joe added, “After seeing two or three clips, I was like ‘Who is this?’ That’s how we came to know Dhanush… it was while working on Marvel films. Dhanush inspired a couple of sequences and hand-to-hand combat scenes in those movies.”

The Russos have directed four films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe; in addition to the last two Avengers films, they helmed Captain America: Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War. They followed their Marvel stint up with a passion project, Cherry, which debuted on Apple TV+ to mixed reviews. The Gray Man is their return to big-budget filmmaking, and has been designed as a possible franchise-starter for Netflix.

Joe said that he had no idea if Dhanush would even be interested in the film, and expressed gratitude on behalf of both his brother and himself that he did. In the film, Dhanush plays an assassin named Avik San, who is summoned in the third act to capture Ryan Gosling’s titular character. At one point, Chris Evans’ villainous Lloyd Hansen describes him as his ‘Tamil friend’. The Gray Man will debut on Netflix on Friday.