Good news arrived on April 21 for Marvel fans with a new deal to bring Sony’s Spider-Man movies to Disney+. The far-reaching deal covers not only Disney’s premium streaming service, but ancillary Disney outlets like Hulu and ABC. It also presumably includes Sony’s earlier Spider-Man incarnations, featuring Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, as well as Tom Holland’s entries into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though the precise details are forthcoming. That still leaves one prominent MCU film off of the platform, however: 2008's The Incredible Hulk.
Unlike DC, which Warner Bros has owned lock, stock and barrel for decades, Marvel’s superheroes were divided among rival studios for a long time. The company sold off the rights to individual characters piecemeal, mostly during the 1990s when the company’s finances were in trouble. Disney’s purchase of Marvel and the subsequent development of the MCU has served as a de facto reclamation project: most notably with an earlier agreement from Sony to include Spidey in the MCU and topped by the purchase of Fox, which granted them the rights to the X-Men, Fantastic Four and other key Marvel figures.
The Incredible Hulk, however, has remained out of these colossal agreements, which fans may find strange. Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner has been a key part of the MCU after all, starting with 2012’s The Avengers and comprising seven total appearances and counting. But key intellectual property rights to the Hulk still belong to Universal, and as of this writing, that causes some major impediments for bringing his earlier onscreen appearance to Disney+.
Hulk, Ang Lee’s ambitious but flawed 2004 movie, predates the MCU by four years. The Incredible Hulk was a reboot, and formally a part of the MCU from its release. In fact, it was only the second MCU movie to hit screens, a few weeks after the original Iron Man, complete with a post-credits scene featuring Tony Stark. But that film suffered from very public production difficulties, resulting in Edward Norton’s departure from the role and Ruffalo taking his place.
The Incredible Hulk is inextricably in the MCU. Banner refers to the climactic showdown in Harlem when speaking to Black Widow in The Avengers and the Abomination is slated to appear in the upcoming She-Hulk series on Disney+. And yet its early appearance in the saga and change of star make it less prominent than the Spider-Man movies, and its absence less keenly felt. The reasons are secret, of course – Universal isn’t obligated to reveal its plans for its properties to anyone – but likely have to do with the leverage provided by owning the rights to the character.
Other studio participants in Marvel’s Byzantine negotiations had fewer options than they did. Paramount, for example, had a six-picture deal with Marvel, only two of which were left when Disney acquired the comic book company. That made it easier for them to divide the remaining pie with the new owners and move forward. Universal has no such cut-off date: their right to the Hulk theoretically stretches in perpetuity, providing them with a bargaining tool that other studios lacked.
Had more than one Hulk movie been on the table, it might induce the two companies to negotiate more aggressively. But with Ruffalo comfortably ensconced in the MCU and without the bigger cache that Sony brings with Spider-Man, the circumstances have left The Incredible Hulk out in the cold. That may change, of course, and Disney has pulled off its share of surprising deals in the past. Ironically, the Hulk’s status as a lone standout may keep it off Disney+ for a while: with so many other heroes to develop, Disney may not consider the last missing movie worth the effort needed to bring it home.