What defines whether a movie is considered standalone or ensemble in regards to character copyrights?
<p>Marvel owns the rights to the Hulk character but the distributing rights belong to Universal. This prevents Marvel from releasing a standalone Hulk movie without the go ahead of Universal or paying out of their own pocket, so they've decided to get around this by including Hulk in the Thor movies. But what constitutes a Hulk movie? Is it screentime?</p>

<p>This would be dealt with in the terms of the Universal-Marvel contract. Since this is a commercial contract its terms will be private to the parties unless and until they are ventilated in a courtroom to settle a dispute. That says, I would guess the contract has a binding arbitration clause so disputes will never see the inside of a courtroom anyway.</p>

copyright