It’s been years since Netflix first announced plans to turn the life story of legendary professional wrestler Hulk Hogan into a biopic, with the heavyweight duo of Marvel Cinematic Universe icon Chris Hemsworth and Academy Award-nominated Joker director Todd Phillips leading the creative charge.
Since then, though, concrete updates have been hard to come by, despite both the man born Terry Bollea and the longtime Thor Odinson repeatedly outlining their desires to make it happen. Things may have just hit a serious setback, too, after Hogan revealed in an interview with Chris Van Vliet that the project isn’t quite dead yet, but may be in need of a new home after leaving the streaming service.
“It was a situation where business-wise, Netflix kind of missed the date as far as a business situation. I had a choice at that time to switch gears. My life rights and stuff are somewhere else now and there’s a lot of things that are getting ready to happen. Hopefully, Todd Phillips and Chris Hemsworth will still want to play, there’s still a huge opportunity there. Even before we get into this, I said, if anyone played Hulk Hogan, I’d want it to be Chris Hemsworth.
His birthday is the same day as mine. We talked once about the situation, he was all excited because he told me he had never played a real person before. [He said], ‘Oh my gosh, your life, it’s so interesting, this is so crazy. This could be the biggest thing I’ve ever done.’ ScottSilver, the writer, [tells me] that it’s the most amazing script he’s ever written. It’s powerful, it’s in a different place but there will be an opportunity for everybody to regroup.”
Hemsworth has a strong relationship with Netflix through the Extraction franchise, Spiderhead, and Interceptor, but it remains to be seen if he’ll persevere with playing Hogan after this. Four years is a long time to not gain any forward momentum, so there’s a distinct chance Hulkamania may not end up runnin’ wild at all, brother.
Published: Oct 5, 2023 12:02 pm