You might have been surprised, or just disappointed, when Marvel unveiled their massive slate of upcoming films recently and saw that there was still no sign of a Hulk solo movie, especially given how amazing Mark Ruffalo was in the role.
However, it turns out that giving the big green fella his own film isn’t as easy as Marvel just saying yes.
Speaking to Collider, Ruffalo revealed that Universal still own the rights to a Hulk movie.
“As far as a Hulk movie, a standalone Hulk movie, Marvel doesn’t really have the rights to that yet,” he explained. “That’s still Universal’s property, so there’s that issue. That’s a big impediment to moving forward with that. Now I don’t think that’s insurmountable, by the way, but I don’t know where it’s going from here for me.”
Ruffalo also clarified that he’s not really sure when and if he’ll appear in Marvel movies outside of The Avengers. “I think it’s four [films left] now, but that could always go further. That could include different—I could show up in another character’s movie; I could do Avengers 3 and 4; I could do a Hulk standalone; I could do a combination of those things. That’s four or five, I think.”
“I don’t know if I’m in [Captain America: Civil War] yet. I don’t know. Sometimes these things happen at the last minute in this world. I really don’t know where I fit in from here on out, and I’m not sure they do.”
Given that Marvel managed to come to some Spidey resolution with Sony, it seems unlikely that they won’t be able to reach some kind of agreement with Universal at some point. That being said, they obviously have a pretty full docket at the moment. Maybe a Banner solo outing isn’t as big a priority as some of us would like it to be.
So…does some studio own the rights to a Black Widow movie?
Avengers: Age Of Ultron will be in cinemas on 23 April 2015 in the UK and 1 May 2015 in the US. You can buy Avengers Assemble on Blu-ray for £9.50 from Amazon.co.uk. Read about the film in the new issue of SciFiNow.
