Mark Ruffalo wants solo Hulk film from Marvel

"It’d be interesting to fill in all the blanks about what happened to him in between all these movies.”

Mark Ruffalo wants to make a stand-alone Marvel film about the Incredible Hulk.

The actor, who first played Bruce Banner’s alter ego in 2012’s The Avengers, told Variety that he’d love to see his character follow in the footsteps of Black Widow, Loki or Hawkeye and be given his own spin-off solo adventure.

“There’s an idea that I think could be really interesting. We’ve never really followed him into his life. He’s always kind of off on the side. He’s like the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the Avengers,” Ruffalo said.

“It’d be interesting to fill in all the blanks about what happened to him in between all these movies.”

In February, Ruffalo told The Independent that discussions about a stand-alone film had taken place, but that the studio “still don’t have the rights to it so it’s not happening in earnest. But I have sort of pitched a couple of different ideas that I think could be interesting."

The 52-year-old actor also revealed that in 2012, Marvel boss Kevin Feige almost quit the franchise over a lack of gender representation.

Ruffalo recalled an encounter in which Feige said he was about to urge his Disney superiors to launch a female-driven superhero movie, but was unsure whether Ike Perlmutter, at that point Disney’s largest shareholder, could be convinced.

Ruffalo said: “When we did the first Avengers, Kevin Feige told me, ‘Listen, I might not be here tomorrow.’ And he’s like, ‘Ike does not believe that anyone will go to a female-starring super movie. So if I am still here tomorrow you will know that I won that battle.’

“That was the turning point for Marvel,” Ruffalo continued. “Because Kevin wanted black superheroes, women superheroes, LGBT superheroes. He changed the whole Marvel universe.”