Everything Action Theater: Ultimate Avengers: The Movie
We’re talking about Hulk Vs. this week on the Everything Actioncast to celebrate it’s 15th anniversary but the movie that kicked off that era of Marvel animated features was Ultimate Avengers. Relased in 2006, Ultimate Avengers was loosely based on Ultimates comic by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch, drastically toned down from the insane edge and adult tone of the comic version. It followed the various members of the Avengers as they are recruited by Nick Fury (Andre Ware) to join his team of superheroes and eventually have to try and stop the Hulk (Fred Tatasciore) when he goes on an unstoppable rampage. Nolan North, Grey Griffin, Olivia D’Abo, Justin Gross, Marc Worden, Michael Massee, David Boat, Dee Bradley Baker, James Arnold Taylor and Steve Blum rounded out the cast. Ultimate Avengers kicked off an 8 movie deal that Marvel made with Lionsgate to produce direct to video animated films and it and its sequel, Ultimate Avengers 2: Rise of the Panther, were hugely succesful, selling over 1.5 million copies. Post-Disney purchase, everything was put under Marvel Studios and Kevin Fiege and tied into the MCU. That, plus the rights issues with Lionsgates, have made all the movies under this deal unavailable on any streaming platform and only available physically on DVD and Blu-ray, although you can watch Ultimate Avengers unofficially below via YouTube. Be sure to check out our Hulk Vs. podcast on Friday, arguably the best movie of this entire Lionsgate series.
