‘Avengers 4’ Director: “Yes, We Fired Mark Ruffalo”

While we all know that the Avengers: Infinity War directors “firing” star Mark Ruffalo for “spoiling” the movie’s title on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon is probably just a joke, those involved are keeping the ball rolling. The Russo Brothers continue to insist that they have indeed fired Ruffalo from Marvel.

On Thursday, Joe Russo appeared at at the Duello Bar in Los Angeles, which he recently opened, to participate in a Q&A about Infinity War and the upcoming Avengers 4. Of course, the topic of Ruffalo’s spoilers came up.

When someone asked the filmmaker how the creative team would keep the likes of Mark Ruffalo and Tom Holland from spoiling Avengers 4, Russo turned to his bartender who said, “Didn’t you fire Mark Ruffalo?”

Russo quickly responded by saying, “Yes, we fired Mark Ruffalo. Mark’s fired.”

This entire fiasco stemmed from Ruffalo’s scheduled appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Ahead of the airing of the episode a couple of weeks ago, Mark Ruffalo tweeted a joke about accidentally spoiling something major regarding Avengers 4, which has been kept a secret to this point.

“[Jimmy Fallon], I trust that you will cut my spoiler slip on the show tonight,” Ruffalo wrote back in October. “That was ‘off the record’ homey. Please don’t get me in trouble with Marvel (Barry) again. DM me back. M.”

Obviously, this was meant to look like message to Fallon that Ruffalo tweeted by mistake. It still managed to get a horde of fans invested in what happened on that night’s episode of The Tonight Show. When the episode aired, Ruffalo said he would reveal the title, but everything he went on to say after that was censored.

This is what got Ruffalo “fired” from Twitter, and Joe Russo seems intent on making sure it stays that way.

Avengers 4 (which will feature Mark Ruffalo reprising the role of Bruce Banner) is set to hit theaters on May 3, 2019.