Mark Ruffalo has confirmed the Hulk will be getting his own story arc within the Marvel Cinematic Universe
The 49-year-old actor has portrayed Bruce Banner and his giant rage-filled green alter ego in three movies so far in the MCU – ‘Avengers Assemble’, ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ and the upcoming third movie in the Thor franchise ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ – but has always been a part of the assembled superhero squad without ever getting his own standalone adventure.
Ruffalo has previously blamed Universal for his lack of solo action, because the studio owns distribution rights to the character and has not been willing or able to make a deal with Marvel.
But now he has teased that Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has decided to make the Hulk the main focus of the next three MCU movies, negating the need for his own standalone story.
Speaking to CinemaBlend, Ruffalo said: "So basically, Kevin Feige pulled me aside this and said, ‘If you were gonna do a … if we were going to do a standalone Hulk movie, what would it be?’ And I said, ‘I think it should be this, this, and this and this, and ends up like this.’ And he’s like, ‘I love that. Why don’t we do that in the next three movies, starting with ‘Thor 3’ and then we go into ‘Avengers 3 and 4.’
"And I was like, ‘That sounds great!’ And so we are at the beginning of this arc."
Speaking previously about the future of the Hulk – who was created writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, first appearing in the debut issue of ‘The Incredible Hulk’ back in 1962 – Ruffalo admitted he couldn’t understand why Universal was so reluctant to play ball with Marvel over his alter ego.
In July, he said: "I want to just make thing perfectly clear today. A standalone ‘Hulk’ movie will never happen. Universal has the rights, and for some reason, they don’t know how to play well with Marvel. And they don’t want to make money."
Universal has owned the distribution rights to the gamma powered wrecking machine since 2003 movie ‘Hulk’ starring Eric Bana and the last Hulk solo movie was 2008’s First Wave film ‘The Incredible Hulk’, which starred Edward Norton in the lead role.
Universal is believed to be unwilling to sell back the distribution rights to the character to Marvel because the Hulk and several of their other comic book characters, such as Captain America and The X-Men, feature at their theme parks and they are aware that Marvel’s parent company Disney want the properties for their own family attractions.
Mark Ruffalo teases Hulk is focus of new MCU films
