‘World War Hulk’ Movie Reportedly Being Developed as a Different Project

With every new year come reports of the ‘World War Hulk’ movie being in development. The rumors have been circling for years now with seemingly no end in sight.

More than a year ago there was a report that Marvel Studios was developing a new Hulk solo movie with Mark Ruffalo set to star. According to the report, the movie was supposed to be called World War Hulk and loosely adapt the known comic book storyline of the same name. However, Marvel Studios never provided any official statements, so nobody took that report seriously. Of course, that didn’t stop the fans from believing, especially after the movie was teased under the table in the ‘She-Hulk’ series finale in 2022.

Recently, Ruffalo confirmed what we’ve all been fearing, that the chances for a standalone Hulk movie are nonexistent:

Kevin’s like what would you like to do? And he said what would you do If you had a standalone Hulk movie and I sad well I’d like to take him from this raging maniac to kind of this integrated character and he’s like okay we’ll do that over the course of four movies. We’ll never give you a standalone Hulk.

This is due to complicated intellectual and distribution rights in which both Marvel Studios and Universal are involved. Marvel let Universal Pictures make a Hulk movie in 2003, but Universal couldn’t make a sequel, so the character rights went back to Marvel. In 2008, Marvel and Universal teamed up for ‘The Incredible Hulk,’ but Universal kept distribution rights for 15 years. That’s why there wasn’t another Hulk movie at that time. The deal said Universal could distribute any Marvel movie with Hulk as the main character, so Hulk stayed a secondary character in MCU films to avoid giving distribution rights to Universal instead of Disney. The state of these rights is still currently confusing, but at least we know that Banner’s story will unfold in future MCU projects.

Now, if the most recent rumors are to be believed brought to light by KC Walsh, ‘World War Hulk’ is being developed as an Avengers movie, something that Ruffalo said is going to happen. Just because his standalone story is off-limits, doesn’t mean that Hulk can not be used prominently in other projects:

Hulk is also rumored to appear in ‘Avengers 5’ and ‘Avengers: Secret Wars.’ Ruffalo also confirmed that he was going to appear in ‘Captain America: Brave New World’ but then backtracked on his statement several hours later claiming that he was mistaken. So make of that what you will. Have something to add? Let us know in the comments below!