In early 2019, a Hulk Hogan biopic looked like a real, heavyweight package: Netflix was attached, Chris Hemsworth was set to play Hogan (Terry Bollea), and Joker director Todd Phillips was lined up to direct, with writers including Scott Silver and Jon Pollono involved.
The plan wasn’t just “wrestling greatest hits.” Reporting at the time said the movie would track Hogan’s rise and the birth of Hulkamania, but also move into messier parts of his public life, including the Gawker lawsuit era and fallout from leaked recordings that surfaced featuring racist language. That scope made it more complicated than a standard sports biopic, because it required careful legal clearance and a tone that could handle both fame and controversy.
Then reality hit. The COVID-19 shutdown in 2020 stalled projects across the industry, and this one got pushed back along with everything else. While the Hogan film was sitting, Phillips’ focus shifted heavily to Joker: Folie à Deux, which consumed his schedule and became the priority until its 2024 release.
Hemsworth still sounded interested years later. In mid-2023, he said there was a good story there and that conversations were still happening, even if Phillips was deep in the Joker world. That kept the “maybe it’s still alive” chatter going.
But by 2024, Phillips publicly moved on. While promoting Folie à Deux, he said the Hogan project wasn’t going to come together for him, essentially a clean exit from the creative side that made it hard to imagine the same version of the film continuing unchanged.
Behind the scenes, the clearest explanation that emerged was contractual. Hogan later said there was a misstep tied to the deal, specifically, that a payment wasn’t made at the right time, which helped unravel the arrangement. Multiple outlets summarized the collapse as a rights/contract issue more than a story problem, even though Hogan also praised the script as dark and compelling.
Put bluntly: this wasn’t a case of “Hollywood lost interest overnight.” It was a slow bleed of delays, shifting priorities, and legal/option complications, exactly the kind of unglamorous stuff that kills biopics, even when the star, director, and streamer are all initially on board.
