That 'Planet Hulk' Movie? Yeah, That's Not Happening (Are Latino-Review's 15 Minutes of Fame Up?)

A couple weeks ago, Latino-Review made a big deal promoting a supposed scoop that Marvel was planning on adapting the Planet Hulk storyline into a standalone Hulk movie and The Avengers 3. Latino-Review scoopster El Mayimbe made it sound like the whole thing was a done deal. Well, according to both The Avengers director Joss Whedon himself and Ain't It Cool News, the news that Marvel would adapt Planet Hulk is "1,000 percent inaccurate." Whedon weighed in on the topic when talking to Yahoo! Movies:

"The problem is it's a very popular character, but it's not a superhero, "Whedon said. "Half of it's a superhero, half of it's a werewolf. And you can't structure it like a superhero movie, you can't light it like a superhero movie. How do you develop that? It would be extremely difficult. The one thing you would have in your favor would be Mark Ruffalo. But right now I don't know if they have plans to do that or not, because he works so well as part of a greater whole, but by himself, it's tough. I don't envy the guys who went before."

Doesn't sound like Whedon (the man whose hands Marvel has basically put the fate of the Cinematic Universe in) thinks a Hulk standalone movie is happening.

Right on the heels of that report, AICN's Beaks debunked the entire "scoop":

A few days after Mayimbe broke his big Super Bowl story (which detailed Marvel's Phase 2 and 3 plans for the Hulk), I had a discussion with an extremely well-connected source who claimed the scoop was "1,000% inaccurate". Mayimbe's story claimed THE AVENGERS 2 would conclude with Earth's Mightiest Heroes exiling an erratic Hulk to the planet Sakaar, thereby setting up a standalone PLANET HULK movie (in which Hulk would go all John Carter on some aliens). ... According to my source, this just isn't happening - not as long as Marvel's got Mark Ruffalo committed to a six-picture deal as Bruce Banner. And that's the primary issue with PLANET HULK: Banner isn't in it at all (unless you count the WHAT IF... story where Banner is immediately killed upon reaching Sakaar). To make sure, I went to a another source for confirmation, and they backed up every detail. PLANET HULK isn't happening.

I recently began following Latino-Review more over the past few weeks, as the site seemed to be delivering great scoops. The site and El Mayimbe started getting national attention after declaring that they had an exclusive scoop that Harrison Ford would be returning for Star Wars: Episode VII. Of course, the site didn't have any named sources to quote or even the news that Ford had actually signed a deal to return as Han Solo. It was basically a report that couldn't be proven false but would be proven true if Ford did reprise his Star Wars role as most people have long expected him to do for Episode VII.

After this encounter with celebrity, El Mayimbe's Twitter feed became a stream of calling out other websites, making fun of Deadline's Nikke Finke (which isn't hard to do) and constantly promising that he had other big scoops coming. After teasing that he had a giant scoop regarding the Justice League movie coming, El Mayimbe posted a crappy fan-made trailer for a hypothetical Wonder Woman movie on Latino-Review. Commenters turned against the site, mocking it for the massive bait-and-switch and scolding El Mayimbe for tricking everyone into thinking the site had a real exclusive.

Within an hour, Latino-Review deleted all negative comments, and El Mayimbe returned to Twitter to almost mock the people who were claiming he had duped them into thinking there was a real scoop. He then announced that he was working on figuring out who Marvel had chosen to voice Guardians of the Galaxy's Rocket Racoon, but declared that if Marvel announced it before he broke the scoop, it would be because they didn't want Latino-Review breaking the news first. Pretty convenient, huh? I'm going to get a scoop, but if it's announced first, it was because Marvel didn't want me to have the scoop.

With Whedon and AICN debunking the Planet Hulk rumor along with the Wonder Woman fan trailer debacle on Wednesday morning, it looks like Latino-Review's 15 minutes of fame is up.