We know that Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner/The Hulk are set to appear in the upcoming Thor: Ragnarok, but does that mean that Marvel Studios is closer to putting the giant green rage monster in his own movie now?
“Actually, it feels even further away,” Ruffalo tells USA Today. “It’s not Marvel’s property, it’s Universal’s property. I don’t know. It seems really problematic.”
That said, Ruffalo would still be interested in pursuing his own movie, citing the Banner/Hulk rivalry as fertile ground for exploration
“I’d love to do it, it’d be really fun. There’s a lot still to do with the character. I always try to think about different places we could go with him…When you get off of the planet Earth, you can start playing with that stuff a little bit. I’m angling for it. I don’t know if it’ll happen now, but at some point, I’d like to see it happen. When I was doing Age of Ultron — doing the Scarlet Witch acid trip scenes — it really took me a long time to figure out what the Hulk would be afraid of. And then I realized, it was Banner. That relationship is what we’re all so into, but we’ve never seen them in the same scene together — you’re either one or the other, or somewhere in between. But I always imagined that that could be pretty exciting if we could pull it off.”
The actor went on to tease the “buddy cop” Thor: Ragnarok, saying:
“I don’t know what the story is yet, but it’ll be (Loki) and Thor, and then I’ll be in there here and there. But I don’t know any of the particulars quite yet. I’ve talked to Taika (Waititi, the director) a little bit and I like where it’s headed. … Chris (Hemsworth) and I have a really good time together, we goof off and play around when Tom Hiddleston is around. So it’ll be a lot of funny back-and-forth, especially with Taika, he does that really well. It’ll have that kind of antagonistic Odd Couple-thing going on.”
Thor: Ragnarok will close out the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Asgardian trilogy. It features a screenplay by Christopher Yost (Thor: The Dark World) and Craig Kyle (producer on previous two Thor films), and will continue the cliffhanger ending of Thor: The Dark World wherein it was revealed that Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has secretly taken the Asgardian throne in guise of his adoptive father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins). The film will start pre-production in Queensland, Australia in January 2016 with filming to begin in June 2016.
“Flight of the Conchords” and What We Do in the Shadows helmer Taika Waititi will direct Thor: Ragnarok, which Marvel Studios will release on November 3, 2017 in 3D/2D theaters and IMAX.
