Back in 2019, news broke that a Hulk Hogan biopic starring Chris Hemsworth was in the works and set to be helmed by Joker director Todd Phillips. It eventually fell by the wayside, however, for a simple reason. At least according to Hogan himself.
The wrestling star explained what happened in a recent interview on the PBD podcast. Things went south when Netflix, in charge of the production, allegedly missed a payment to Hogan during the process. "They kind of missed a beat in the contract," he said. "There was a payment that wasn’t placed at the right time."
It was certainly an exciting project to have coming down the pipeline as he worked with Joker writer Scott Silver alongside John Pollono to bring his story to life. "The script was amazing," Hogan admitted. "When I read it, I’m like, 'Oh my God, this is really good.' And 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. And when I read it, it was just very, very dark." That darkness, he acknowledged, could be "what the public may want to see."
Add in a Marvel superstar like Chris Hemsworth and the idea of what it could be grew even bigger.
"There was talk that Chris Hemsworth had never played a real person before and he could probably win an Oscar, this thing's so powerful," Hogan said. Ultimately, however, the alleged missed payment led Hogan himself to abandon the project. "I just was moving forward at the time and when they, business-wise, missed a date, there was an option for me to pull out and I did," he recounted.
Phillips, meanwhile, told Variety in August that he "love[d] what we were trying to do" with the shelved Hogan movie, though he isn't interested in moving forward with it either. "That’s not going to come together for me," he said.
