Why Mark Ruffalo thinks a stand-alone ‘Hulk’ movie is never going to happen
The Hulk may have had his last smash.
Mark Ruffalo believes that the odds of getting his own stand-alone film as the Incredible Hulk are slim to none.
“I’d love to do a stand-alone Hulk, I just don’t think that’s ever going to happen,” Ruffalo, 56, told GQ for its cover story on Wednesday. “It’s very expensive if you did a whole movie, which is why they use the Hulk so sparingly.
“I priced myself out,” the actor jokingly added.
Ruffalo, who appeared as Dr. Bruce Banner/Hulk in 2012’s “The Avengers,” took over the role from Edward Norton, who played the not-so-jolly green giant in Marvel’s 2008 film.
The “Now You See Me” star reprised the destructive role in eight films, with his most recent appearance being in the Disney+ miniseries “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.”
“I think the expansion into streaming was really exciting,” Ruffalo said of Marvel balancing both films and short-term projects. “But the thing about Marvel movies is you had to wait three years and that created a mystique.
“These corrections could be really positive things,” he added. “Will it be what it was? I don’t know.”
Luckily, Ruffalo’s Marvel status hasn’t stopped him from taking on more serious roles.
“I’ve sat in movie theaters with the movies I’ve done with big directors,” he told the outlet. “I’ve also experienced these Marvel movies with an audience and the amount of community and expression … it touched every single emotion.
“That means something to me,” he said. “I don’t look down on it.”
Despite Marvel having two more “Avengers” films — set to release on May 1, 2026, and May 7, 2027 — it is unclear what role Ruffalo will play … if any at all.
In the meantime, he has the 96th Academy Awards to look forward to.
This year, the actor was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his work in the Emma Stone-led movie “Poor Things.” He’ll be going up against his Marvel pal Robert Downey Jr., who is nominated for his role in Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.”
“I really want Robert to win an Oscar,” Ruffalo revealed. “I mean, I’d like to win one too, but I would celebrate him.”
Despite his nomination, he once thought he was too old for sex scenes.
“I didn’t know if I could pull this off,” Ruffalo told Perfect magazine last month. “I’ve never done anything like [‘Poor Things’] before.”
“So, like, the sex scenes,” he continued. “Am I too old to be doing that kind of stuff? Does anyone want to see that?”
The “Spotlight” actor, who appeared nude from the waist up in Perfect’s cover shoot, mused that Hollywood is currently “in this prudish time for films.”
“Sexuality is so deeply connected to the psychology of a character,” he went on. “And it should be explored in that sense, too.”
Ruffalo admitted that he was terrified to bare it all for the Yorgos Lanthimos-directed movie.
“I was like, ‘Do I have to?’ All I can hear is, ‘Nobody wants to see your old ass anymore. Maybe you shouldn’t be doing movies like that anymore,’” he laughed.
“I mean, it’s my least favorite part of it, but I also saw it as very comedic and also, like, an extension of the physical comedy that we were already finding. So it was just another way to tell the story.”
