We’ve been hearing rumours of a possible Captain America cameo in The Incredible Hulk recently (apparently its nothing more than serum), but one we haven’t heard of before is that fellow Marvel character Peter Parker could also have been in The Incredible Hulk.
Marvel are doing the cool thing of crossing characters over films, we’ve seen Captain America’s shield in Iron Man, then we will see Tony Stark in Hulk and now director Louis Leterrier revealed to MTV information on another interesting cameo…that didn’t happen…
“The University at the end [where Banner meets with Samuel Sterns] is Columbia University. Columbia University in the Marvel world, especially in the ‘Spider Man’ world, is Empire State University,” the director explained. “I wanted some kind of shot where you’re like, ‘Oh my god. Is that Peter Parker?’ That would have been fun!”
Unfortunately for Leterrier, crossovers begin and end with the properties Marvel has total control of – no matter how hard you ask. And “Spider-Man” all its many names, places, and stories therein, belong to Sony. But while he quickly realized that he wouldn’t be able to get Tobey Maguire (no matter how much he wanted to), Leterrier thought a compromise could be reached. No dice, he sighed.
“I just wanted to call it Empire University – to treat it like a coherent world,” he recalled. “And Sony, who has the rights to Spidey, didn’t want us to do that. It was a small thing but something we couldn’t do.”
Still, Leterrier is such a fan of comics, and the new combined Marvel universe in particular, he’s already jealous of the director who one day, he knows, will get to do what he couldn’t.
“Marvel is pretty good at doing their own movies and so eventually the studios will allow them to chaperone the production of [all of them],” he said. “Years from now you’ll see Peter Parker meeting Bruce Banner.”
