Since the launch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we've had three Iron Man movies, two Thor movies, and two Captain America movies, but only one Hulk movie. Why? Why aren't we getting more Hulk movies? Any official words?
Answer
I was surprised to learn that there actually is some official word on this.
Why no Hulk sequels?
CinemaBlend.com reports on some commentary made by Joss Whedon on the set of Age of Ultron. According to Whedon, it was a decision made by Marvel Studios to keep Hulk an Avengers-exclusive character:
The writer/director was discussing the use of Hulk in the movie and the fact that he didn't have his own Phase 2 solo film, and he remembered a conversation he had with Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige. Whedon quoted the executive, saying that he was told, "We think right now it’s good to have somebody who we could only have in The Avengers"
Okay, but why Hulk, specifically?
In principle any character could be an Avengers-exclusive, and some of them sort of are: neither Black Widow nor Hawkeye have had solo films, and there doesn't seem to be any plans to make them.
In an article on Forbes.com, former film writer Mark Hughes reports that the distribution rights for the Hulk character are owned by Universal, not Marvel:
But despite obtaining the cinematic rights to make Hulk movies, Marvel did not obtain distribution rights. Universal held those rights, and today I can confirm the exact situation is that Universal currently retains the right of first refusal to distribute any Hulk films in the future. If for some reason Universal chose to forgo distribution, then Disney would immediately pick up the distribution rights for the Hulk movie.
This is clearly not an insurmountable obstacle; Marvel and Universal managed to come to an arrangement to release The Incredible Hulk, so in theory they could do so again.
However, Marvel has no good motivation to do this; of all their solo characters, Hulk has proven to be the worst box office draw. I made a graph comparing the budget of each MCU film (at time of posting, so no Age of Ultron) to total box office revenue. I also threw Ang Lee's Hulk on the end, because that film's performance is very relevant when talking about a Hulk solo film. The blue bar is the budget (in unadjusted millions), and the orange is global box office revenue (also unadjusted millions):
Numbers from BoxOfficeMojo: Hulk, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2,Thor , Captain America, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Thor 2, The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy
If I'm a studio executive looking to evaluate how smart of an investment a movie is, what I'm looking at is how big the orange bar is compared to the blue bar. If they're exactly the same height, I broke even; no profit1.
Hulk just about doubled its budget; it was made for $137 million, and box office revenue was only $245 million. The Incredible Hulk actually did slightly worse: it made $263 million at the box office, but cost Marvel Studios $150 million to make.
In comparison, the next-lowest performing MCU movie was Captain America: The First Avenger, which made back well more than twice its budget: Marvel Studios spent $140 million on it, and it made $371 million at the box office.
Meanwhile we have The Avengers sitting proudly on top, having earned a whopping nine times its budget at the box office.
As a studio executive, what do I take away from this? Hulk solo movies are an incredibly risky investment.
Just for giggles (and because today is a holiday and I literally have nothing better to occupy my time with), I decided to do a similar analysis for other films based on Marvel properties - I limited myself to movies made on or after the year 2000, since that's about when they started becoming, you know, somewhat reliably good. The titles are ordered by how good of an investment they were2, so I added release year after the movie title:
Once again, numbers from BoxOfficeMojo: Punisher: War Zone, Elektra, Fantastic Four (2015), The Punisher, The Incredible Hulk, Hulk, Blade: Trinity, Ghost Rider, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men: First Class, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Daredevil, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Captain America, Blade II, Thor, X-Men: Apocalypse, Iron Man 2, The Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four (2005), Spider-Man 3, The Wolverine, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, X2: X-Men United, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Thor: The Dark World, Spider-Man 2, X-Men, Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: Civil War, Age of Ultron, Spider-Man, Iron Man 3, The Avengers, Logan, Deadpool.
As you can see, Hulk is one of the least bankable Marvel properties of the last twenty years. Only Elektra (who was probably as harmed by horrible reputation of the 2003 Daredevil film as anything else), Punisher (who, despite his tragic backstory, is one of the least sympathetic Marvel protagonists3, 4), and the Fantastic Four (whose latest outing was just so freaking bad) have made worse movies than Hulk.
1 This is a vast oversimplification, but it serves well enough as a first approximation. These numbers only consider production budgets and box office earnings; in reality, there are many other sources of both revenue and costs that would go into deciding whether a particular movie was a good investment, including but not limited to:
- Marketing budgets, which in 2014 were allegedly hovering around $200 million per movie, according to the Hollywood Reporter
- Home media sales
- Merchandising
- Cross-promotional effects5
- Intellectual property concerns; as that link notes, it's occasionally considered worthwhile to make a movie solely as a means to hold onto the rights
- Actor royalties
- Distribution costs, which ties into the earlier discussion about Universal's ownership of the Hulk distribution rights
- Profit-sharing with theatres
Accurately calculating all of this would be way too much research, but The Week magazine estimated in 2016 that about 4% of American box office revenue can be considered studio profit, and every $1 of box office revenue will earn an additional $1.75 over the next ten years through alternative distributions (like DVD sales)
This is also a simplified model (and doesn't get into the notoriously bizarre practice of Hollywood accounting, where technically almost no movie actually profits), but does help to explain why film studios are so risk-averse, even when the raw numbers are so outrageous
2 Literally, by rate of return, or how much profit they made as a percentage of budget
3 Note that I didn't use the word "hero." Yeah, that was on purpose.
4 That being said, kudos to Daredevil's second season for simultaneously making Punisher into both a frothing lunatic and a sympathetic, quasi-heroic figure
5 By which I basically mean: the effect that releasing a movie has on the products of other divisions; does releasing a new Avengers movie affect the ratings on the Marvel television shows, or the sales of Marvel comic books?
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