LATINO-REVIEW Finally Called Out For A Fake Scoop, So Can We Stop Believing Them?

I don’t often deride a fellow brother in arms in this geek news world, but I’ve grown increasingly agitated with Latino-Reviews‘s deluge of “scoops”. They’ve spent the past few months pouring out either wildly preposterous or entirely predictable leaks from their super secret source at Marvel Studios, but none of them have been proven true.

And everything they’ve chosen to spoil is WAY too convenient. They don’t have any scoops involving Iron Man 3 or Man of Steel, which are releasing soon. No, instead they claim to have knowledge of events which are 3 or more years down the road, which ensures that 1) We won’t be able to verify their reports for a long, long time 2) If they are proven wrong, who cares? No one remembers that one article, from that one time, from that one site. Well, except for me, because that nonsense really pissed me off.

The fellows at AICN, a more reputable establishment, claim to have insider info contradicting El Mayimbe (the scoopmeister at LR) and his Planet Hulk/World War Hulk rumor. Before they dove into the nitty gritty, they threw a few handfuls of praise towards El Mayimbe (since they’re buddies and all), but they made some pretty bold claims, completely discrediting every assertion LR’s made about Bruce Banner’s future at Marvel Studios. Here’s a bit of what they said…

According to my source, this just isn’t happening – not as long as Marvel’s got Mark Ruffalo committed to a six-picture deal as Bruce Banner.

I couldn’t get either source to spill on Marvel’s specific plans for a standalone Hulk movie post-AVENGERS 2, but I’m told that Ruffalo-as-Banner will be an integral part of that film. After two false starts with Banner, Marvel is thrilled with Ruffalo. The last thing they want to do is reduce his role. Sure, they could have Ruffalo play Hulk in mocap, but the Banner element would be gone – and this evidently is important to Marvel.

Now, don’t’ get me wrong, this article isn’t meant to be a giant “El Mayimbe is full of it” fest. The guy’s a great writer, he produces some entertaining posts, but this Marvel scoop nonsense is just… well, it’s nonsense.

I woulda bet on this too, but it never happened

This isn’t his first offense, either. His other massive reveal that we’ve been able to refute (again, remember that most of his claims are about movies so far from releasing, that there’s literally no means to verify them) was his Black Panther reveal. Last summer he claimed that the classic hero would be a flagship title for Marvel’s Phase 2, and as we all know, that just isn’t true. Kevin Feige and crew have already announced their lineup, and Black Panther’s a no show. Now, what’s particularly interesting about this leak, is that El Mayimbe begged site readers to follow his Twitter account, and only once he reached his quota of a few thousand new readers did he reveal the ol’ Wakandan scoop.

Did he actually have a Marvel source? Or did he contrive this whole story, just to up his Twitter stats? In all honesty, if I were to construct a similar scheme, I would have chosen BP too. Fanboys love him, he fits a key demographic that the MCU’s yet to exploit, and he’s one of the most well rounded characters for which marvel still has the rights. It was such an obvious choice, but it wasn’t true, was it?

Black Panther.  World War Hulk. So, now that those two are debunked, can we stop listening to the rest?  I know everyone loves a good scoop.  They rile the fanboy community up, providing much needed distractions in the slow news months, but passing off leaks from a Marvel source (if one actually exists) who has a mixed record of either bullshit claims or completely predictable ones is unethical… and an all around dick move.

Tony agrees… kinda…