No Hulk Sequel in the Works, Says Marvel
Posted 04.17.12 by Ryan
The movie doesn't open for a few weeks, but the The Avengers is already receiving positive word-of-mouth, especially for writer-director Joss Whedon's use of the Hulk. (This is the first movie appearance for the Marvel character since 2008's The Incredible Hulk and the third since 2003's Hulk — with Mark Ruffalo being the third actor to play the role.)
So far Marvel has three solo movies planned for the Avengers team: 2013's Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 and 2014's Captain America 2. However, there are no plans for another solo Hulk movie. For his part, Ruffalo told IGN that he would "love" to make another Hulk movie.
Why not! It was the one character — you know, I was a comic book fan when I was a kid and I always loved the Hulk. When The Incredible Hulk, that [TV] show, came on, I would not miss that. And so if I was going to find myself in that world, this would be the guy that I would be most interested in doing. To make a very short answer long: Yeah, I'd love to have him do his own movie.
So with Ruffalo on board, why aren't there plans to make another Hulk? Marvel's President of Production Kevin Feige told The Huffington Post that Marvel wasn't exactly planning on giving the Hulk another "shot" at a big screen appearance.
Well, no. This was the other shot. Right? I mean, this was the third appearance of Hulk and everything that we had and were going for, we put in to Hulk’s appearance in Avengers. So, I love that people are saying that and are feeling that way about Hulk, but mission accomplished at this point. And the way we go forward, we’ll see. But it was a long road to get to this point. Although, I will say, after the screening, I heard various arguments over who was their favorite. Which is my favorite thing: Arguing what was the favorite moment or character. And the fact that so many of them are saying Hulk feels very, very good. Where we go next, we’ll see. But we’ll be very careful about it and deliberate — as we were in how we wanted to bring him back in Avengers.
Feige had similar comments for Collider, stating that "we’re gonna play it very carefully" with the character of the Hulk.
We had varying degrees of success on those first two movies, so we’re not gonna say, “Oh we did it! Another one!” We’re gonna be smart about it and play it out. There are no plans right now to do another Hulk. Hulk might be just the special guest in Avengers movies, who knows?
Of course, should The Avengers prove to be a success, it's possible that Marvel could change its mind. The studio still has a May 16, 2014 release date scheduled for an unannounced project, which has an outside chance of being The Incredible Hulk 2.
More likely, however, are the adaptations of Ant-Man or The Runaways, which have both been in development for some time, or even adaptations of The Inhumans or The Guardians of the Galaxy, which Feige has mentioned in the past. He also recently told told Comic Book Resources, "Two of those four are much closer than people realize, and we'll be talking about them in the coming months."