A more than evident absence
Admittedly, the Hulk movies haven’t been too prolific. You have to go back to the beginning of the MCU in 2008 to remember a exclusively focused on the Mass, with a leading actor as conflictive as he was Edward Nortonwhich is the only one approved within the cinematographic universe so far, although it later picked up the baton Mark Ruffalo.
Earlier, in 2003, we had another Hulk film in theaters, starring Eric Bana and It is not exactly a reference or canon within the famous UCM So yes, many fans are wondering why the current Marvel doesn’t seem to want to jump on the bandwagon of its own projects starring the green giant and even invests efforts in its cousin she hulk.
And the answer must go to look for it in a place (something) similar to the one inhabited by Spider-Man, another of the Marvel heroes who, at present, has his exploitation film rights in hands other than those of Disney itself. . And who is that other company?
Distribution and little else
The point is that while the 2003 film is entirely the work of Universal, the production company that had the rights to the Hulk, the one from 2008 was already made by Marvel after getting them back two years earlier. The reason? Universal had not brought new deliveries to the big screen and did not seem to have much interest in doing so, after the small fiasco of the film starring Eric Bana. Now, even by returning that (partial) property, Universal would be ultimately responsible for the distribution of each new film produced by Marvel.
Thus, Disney could only carry out such distribution if Universal expressly waived to do so, a risk that Bob Iger’s surely do not want to run, especially if we take into account that the hero played by Mark Ruffalo is one of those who has achieved the least box office if we compare it with the box office achieved by other series of movies such as those of Hombre de Hierro, Captain Americaetc., hence his appearances almost always had to do with his presence as another member of the Avengers.
Only time will tell if Marvel wants to re-release a Hulk movie, but if so, Universal will be the first to decide if it wants to distribute it worldwide. So to avoid that drink, surely from Kevin Feige’s office they have preferred to leave the character in the fridge and hope that a lack of interest leads Universal managers to forget about the old deal that continues to offer them some control over the character.
