Here's Why The Hulk Was Cut Out Of 'Captain America: Civil War'

For the past few months, we've been wondering whether the Hulk would drop in on Captain America: Civil War. There have been some hints that he might be, but Mark Ruffalo's name hasn't been included on any cast lists so far. Now Ruffalo has put the speculation to rest once and for all: No, the Hulk is not in Captain America: Civil War. But he almost was.

According to Ruffalo, the character was originally slated to appear, but was later written out of the script. Find out why after the jump. 

Ruffalo explained why the Civil War Hulk appearance was scrapped in an interview with BadTaste.it (via Coming Soon).

Because he's still missing, and it's unknown where he is. I thought that I would be in the film, but in the end they evidently believed that the reveal of what happened to the Hulk was too big, and Marvel wants to save that information for later. My character had been in the script, but then he got removed. Who knows, maybe the Hulk will never return. They want to keep the revelation of what happened to him a secret, because it's something really big.

(Note: the quote above was originally written up in Italian, and was then translated into English by Google and cleaned up by yours truly. Feel free to blame any awkwardness or loss of nuance on Google Translate.)

That reasoning makes sense. The ending of Avengers: Age of Ultron was a huge turning point for the character, and Civil War looks like it's got enough stuff going on already without shoehorning in an additional subplot for the Hulk.

Interestingly, this isn't the first time we've heard of Marvel saving Hulk material for future films. In May, Joss Whedon revealed a major Hulk moment had been cut out of Avengers: Age of Ultron. "I don't talk about it specifically because I said to Marvel, 'You can use this in another movie! Hold on to that!'" he said.

So when will we finally get to see all these big Hulk reveals that Marvel's been reserving? We recently learned that Marvel does have the rights to make a standalone Hulk movie. But with Phase Three already mapped out it's unlikely we'll see one before Phase Four, if ever. More likely is that he'll appear in the two Avengers: Infinity War movies, which are due out in 2018 and 2019.