It’s fair to say the Chris Hemsworth-led Hulk Hogan biopic was the most-anticipated wrestling movie in a while, but we learned back in August that the project was dead. Now, thanks to Hogan himself, we’re getting a little more insight into why that happened, as he explained on a podcast why he decided to pull out of the movie despite thinking it would win an Oscar.
Many were excited about what Hemsworth would look like as Hulk Hogan and the Hulkster confirmed he was also excited about the movie. He spoke to the PBD Podcast about why he decided to pull out of the movie when Netflix was late on payment while also talking about what he loved about the script:
I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is really good.’ At the time, I was in a space where I told him the positive stuff about wrestling and the negative stuff about wrestling. I spent about three years with this writer, going back and forth. When I read it, it was very, very dark, if that would be the right word, but it was probably what the public may want to see, you know? And when I read it, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, if this thing comes out…’ There was talk that Chris Hemsworth had never played a real person before and he would probably win an Oscar and the movie too; this thing’s so powerful, very powerful. I said, ‘Oh, that’s great. Everybody’s going to do really great, but then I’m going to be left here, cheese stands alone, and that might be the last thing people remember me for.’
Despite thinking the script was amazing, Hulk Hogan feared the movie would ultimately become the last thing people remembered about him and pulled out of it. It’s a shame, considering what else he revealed about the movie during the podcast. The movie seemed to feature a lot of what we wanted from the Hogan biopic, and it was set to lead up right until he left WWE and went over to WCW. As the wrestler explained, this left the door open for a sequel, in case the movie was as big of a hit as he thought it’d be.
While the Chris Hemsworth biopic is dead, we do have Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Killing Gawker movie. The movie will focus less on Hulk Hogan’s wrestling career and more on the court cast that highlighted his racist remarks that temporarily got him removed from the WWE. It was previously reported that Hogan is indifferent to the movie coming out and is not connected to it in any way, shape, or form. Hogan confirmed he is not involved but mildly implied during the podcast that the movie could have the same legal issues as Gawker did if they ever made that movie.
The WWE legend didn’t rule out seeing the canceled biopic. He said a docuseries or a four-part television series based on the script was on the table, but he stressed the need for a “checks and balances ” system. Based on that comment, I would speculate there were parts of the script that Hulk Hogan didn’t like but couldn’t necessarily alter, which also might’ve factored into his pulling out of the movie. He could’ve also just been mad at how jacked Chris Hemsworth was for the role. We can only run with the reasons he gave and speculate on the rest. For now, there’s no Hulk Hogan biopic that we know of in the works, but maybe that will change.
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