Mark Ruffalo Says a ‘Hulk’ Movie ‘Even Further Away’ Than Before

After the first Avengers movie, many Marvel fans voiced their excitement over a potential Hulk spinoff movie. The first two Hulk movies were mostly critical and commercial disappointments, but this was a new Hulk, a character that Marvel had finally cracked. But, despite Hulk’s popularity within the Marvel Cinematic Universe being at an all-time high, Marvel currently has no plans for a standalone Hulk movie. In fact, star Mark Ruffalo says that a Hulk movie now “feels even further away” than it ever has.

Ruffalo, who stars in the upcoming drama Spotlight, spoke to USA Today about the potential and dropped the disappointing news.

Actually, it feels even further away. It’s not Marvel’s property, it’s Universal’s property. I don’t know. It seems really problematic.

We’ve heard before that Universal Studios still owns the solo movie rights to the Hulk character (they released both the 2003 and the 2008 films), but fans were hopeful that Marvel and Universal would find a way to work out some sort of deal, not unlike the one that allows Hulk to appear in Marvel Studios films. It turns out, that is definitely not the case.

The other question would be, what would the plot of a Hulk solo movie even be? Ruffalo thinks he has the answer:

When I was doing Age of Ultron — doing the Scarlet Witch acid trip scenes — it really took me a long time to figure out what the Hulk would be afraid of. And then I realized, it was Banner. That relationship is what we’re all so into, but we’ve never seen them in the same scene together — you’re either one or the other, or somewhere in between. But I always imagined that that could be pretty exciting if we could pull it off. In the Marvel Universe, there is some precedence for it. I remember as a kid, seeing a few of the comics that’d have this multidimensional thing, so there’s a lot of ways to do it … if we could find the right context to use it.

Ruffalo is right that the separation of Banner and Hulk did happen in the comics back in Incredible Hulk #315. This 1986 issue saw Doc Samson separating Bruce and Hulk into two separate beings. S.H.I.E.L.D. wants to destroy the Hulk creature, still unconscious, but Doc Samson can’t stand to see him killed and frees him. Now awake, and without Banner’s conscience, Hulk goes on a rampage. It’s an interesting concept for a film, but it seems like the kind of thing that will never come to pass (especially now with Ruffalo talking about it publicly).

Though Hulk is sitting out the massive Captain America: Civil War, you can get your fill of the big, green guy in Thor: Ragnarok, which has been described as a Thor/Hulk buddy movie.