For a long time fans thought the reluctance to make a solo “Hulk” was on the part of Marvel. Director Joss Whedon said after the first ‘Avengers’ movie that a Hulk film would be the most difficult Marvel picture to pull off — as evinced by “The Incredible Hulk” with Ed Norton, which is easily Marvel’s lowest grossing film by a considerable margin. But it turns out the reason there’s no Hulk solo film is more complicated than that and it has to do with studio rights. Universal released Ang Lee’s “Hulk,” and while rights eventually transferred over to Marvel for their aforementioned movie directed by Louis Leterrier, apparently those rights are complex and Universal has some kind of say on what comes next.
And in a recent Yahoo interview, Mark Ruffalo elaborated a little bit more the issues between Marvel and Universal. Apparently they’re a bit personal.
“I think they’ve been working on it,” Ruffalo said of the two studios. “Marvel and Universal famously don’t get along very well, and so that’s working against us, definitely. But I know for a fact that everyone is holding out hope that one day we can do it. But the nature of the relationship right now, it’s a little prohibitive. And I hope that that changes, that changes with regimes, it changes over the course of time. But right now it doesn’t look particularly promising.”
So maybe ‘Infinity War’ won’t lead to a solo movie just yet.
Yahoo suggested that “Spider-Man” seemed off the table indefinitely, but a regime change at Sony paved the way for a Marvel/Sony collaboration. “Yeah, I think ultimately that’s what they’re after,” Ruffalo said of a similar partnership, “it working out for both sides. But like I said, Marvel and Universal are just not having a good time together right now.”
Meanwhile, in related Marvel news, “Captain America: Civil War” directors Joe & Anthony Russo confirmed news that hit much earlier this year: their follow-up films “Avengers: Infinity War” Parts 1 & 2 will shoot entirely with IMAX cameras, a huge milestone since even blockbusters like “The Dark Knight,” “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” “Interstellar,” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” were only partially shot with these cumbersome cameras.
The Russos said “Captain America: Civil War” features about 20 minutes of IMAX. “It’s our first time using these new Arri 65 cameras in the IMAX format and it’s beautiful. Once we saw the 20 minutes of footage that we had shot, that’s when we made the decision to do both movies of the ‘Infinity’ War [entirely] in it. The scale is appropriate for superhero storytelling. There’s a lot of characters in those movies, a lot of characters who are tall characters. Big characters who are much taller than regular humans.”
The brothers didn’t say which scenes were shot in IMAX but further explained why the format is necessary. “So, when you have that beautiful IMAX top and bottom frame, it creates a much grander format for a movie like that to be viewed in,” they said. “I just feel like the thing that distinguishes movies right now is that wide-screen format and the difference of why you go out of your house to go to the theater; it’s to have that experience that you can’t have at your house. For us, we wanted to really deliver on the promise of those movies. There’re 20 movies behind them, so they’re the culmination of 20 films and it needs a big beautiful format to tell that story.”