Avengers Director Joe Russo Touts Box Office Over Oscars in Playful Jab at Martin Scorse

Publish date: 2024-06-13

“Avengers” filmmaker Joe Russo has caused quite a stir on social media for posting a response to a recent TikTok featuring Martin Scorsese. The Oscar winner’s daughter, Francesca, posted a TikTok this month in which Scorsese playfully directs his dog, Oscar. Russo responded by posting a video in which he tells Scorsese they share the same muse. The camera pans out to reveal Russo is holding his own dog, whom he jokingly calls “Box Office.”

“Aw look, he’s got a schnauzer! I love schnauzers. And his name is Oscar. That’s really cute,” Russo says in his video replying to the Scorsese TikTok. Russo then addresses his own dog: “Ok come on, Box Office.”

Related Stories

concert crowd and stock arrow VIP+

New Live Music Data Suggests Cautious Optimism

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 26: Sally Field attends the 29th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at Fairmont Century Plaza on February 26, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

Sally Field Details Her 'Traumatic' and 'Hideous' Illegal Abortion From 1964 to Urge Voters to Elect Kamala Harris: 'We Can't Go Back'

Russo’s video is clearly trying to be playful, but it has rubbed many film writers and industry professionals the wrong way, as it seemingly finds Russo jabbing at Scorsese after Scorsese infamously spoke out against Marvel movies several years ago. Scorsese criticized Marvel for putting a stronghold on film exhibition and forcing mid-budget movies and more adult-oriented fare out of the mainstream marketplace.

Popular on Variety

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Russo Brothers (@therussobrothers)

“I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema,” Scorsese told Empire about Marvel movies back in October 2019 while promoting “The Irishman.” “Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”

Scorsese later published an op-ed essay in The New York Times in which he wrote that cinema is about “revelation, aesthetic, characters — the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves.” That is all absent in Marvel movies, he wrote, adding that while “many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures,” ultimately “what’s not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes.”

Russo playfully flaunting his box office wins over Scorsese’s Academy Award comes at a time when Scorsese isn’t necessarily lighting the box office on fire with his latest release, “Killers of the Flower Moon.” The $200 million Western epic earned critical acclaim but has only grossed $40 million at the domestic box office so far. The film’s worldwide gross stands at $84 million and counting. Many box office pundits are wondering if the film can even make it to the $150 million worldwide mark.

Many industry professionals came to Scorsese’s defense on X/Twitter after Russo’s video started going viral online.

“Joe Russo took hundreds of millions from Netflix to make whatever he wanted, and came up with…’The Grey Man,'” wrote Toonami co-founder and Warner Bros. Discovery’s SVP of action and anime series Jason DeMarco. “Marty got hundreds of millions from Netflix and Apple, and made ‘The Irishman’ and ‘Killers of The Flower Moon.’ I know which movies ppl will talk about in 20 years…”

“In 50 years no one will know who Joe Russo is,” added film writer Louis Peitzman.

The official X/Twitter account for Los Angeles’ genre film festival BeyondFest was even more blunt, writing: “Let’s just be honest, Joe Russo is a rich asshole hack who won the lottery when [Marvel Studios president Kevin] Feige plucked him from obscurity and let him tagalong.”

“Killers of the Flower Moon” is playing in theaters nationwide from Apple and Paramount.

https://twitter.com/Clarknova1/status/1718647354948030630

Scorsese used his clout to cash his biggest check and make a jeremiad work on America’s founding sin and the bottomless pit of human sin.

Joe Russo used his success to frame a shot from inside Tom Holland’s anus pic.twitter.com/HPv9RbgI0W

— Adam Piron (@adam_piron) October 29, 2023

Cruel of Joe Russo to name his dog Visual Illiteracy

— Siddhant Adlakha (@SiddhantAdlakha) October 30, 2023
https://twitter.com/SeanMBurns/status/1718655616929955942

In 50 years no one will know who Joe Russo is. https://t.co/tTd6Vf4yn7

— Louis Peitzman (@LouisPeitzman) October 29, 2023
https://twitter.com/BeyondFest/status/1718722282569470092

I could only watch a few seconds of that Joe Russo video bc it was so cringe so I just now found out he ends up bragging about BO which is pretty bold considering everything he makes that isn’t an IP delivery service is a money pit that’s materially harming actors’ careers

— Jake Cole (@ThatJakePC) October 30, 2023

Read More About:

Jump to Comments

More from Variety

Most Popular

Must Read

Sign Up for Variety Newsletters

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy.We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. // This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Variety Confidential

A Variety and iHeartRadio Podcast

ncG1vNJzZmiukae2psDYZ5qopV9nfXN%2Fjp%2BgpaVfo7K4v46jpp5loqrAtLuMo5ibq12irrPAyKdkrJufp8Cmv8RmpJqqppq5bq7OsWSonpaesKZ5zqyamqqjYn5zf5RwbmtwaGx8