<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start with the obvious caveat here: Actors\u2014especially actors living in the Marvel ecosystem for more than a decade at this point, and who have learned what\u2019s good for them\u2014lie about future projects all the time. So when Mark Ruffalo responds to questions about his expected involvement<\/a> in next year\u2019s Spider-Man\u00a0movie,\u00a0Brand New Day, by saying that he\u2019s \u201cstill waiting to hear\u201d about being in the movie, and that he hasn\u2019t \u201cread a script yet\u201d<\/a> for a flick that\u2019s been filming in Scotland since last month, it\u2019s possible he\u2019s just following the dictates of Marvel\u2019s PR apparatus and lying his\u00a0Task<\/a>-loving head off<\/p>\n Still, Ruffalo\u00a0did\u00a0seem sincere when questioned by Entertainment Tonight\u00a0about the reports, offering up an affably baffled suggestion that he doesn\u2019t know much more about the movements of the Marvel machine than the rest of us. He does sound enthusiastic about potentially coming back to the role of Bruce Banner for the first time since 2022\u2019s\u00a0She-Hulk<\/a>, noting that \u201cIf it does happen, it would be incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n Details about\u00a0Brand New Day\u00a0are being kept tightly under wraps, so all we\u2019ve really had to go on has been various casting announcements that have slipped out. (The Ruffalo one was a biggie, but possibly even larger was the reveal<\/a> that Tom Holland\u2019s old buddy Jon Bernthal would appear in the film as his recently resurgent<\/a> Punisher, suggesting a bigger intersection between the newly anonymized Peter Parker\u2019s adventures and New York\u2019s street-level crimefighting side.) The film is, somewhat amazingly, the very next movie set on the Marvel release schedule, despite not being out until July of 2026; the gap between the movie and this summer\u2019s Fantastic Four: First Steps<\/a>\u00a0is the longest since the (mostly COVID-mandated) gap between Spider-Man; Far From Home and\u00a0Black Widow\u00a0that encompassed all of 2020.<\/p>\n