Hulk Like Ed
Edward Norton is bulking up. Make that, hulking up.
The Oscar-nominated thespian, late of the romantic period drama The Painted Veil, has been tapped to headline the new Hulk movie.
Filming on The Incredible Hulk will begin this summer, Marvel Entertainment announced Monday. Norton will play Bruce Banner, the green muscle monster's nongreen, regular-size alter ego.
"Edward is perfectly suited to bring one of the most popular and important Marvel icons to the big screen in a new and exciting way," Marvel Studios production president Kevin Feige said in a statement.
In its press release, Marvel made liberal use of words such as "new," "exciting," "action-packed" and "return to the roots"—the better to distance The Incredible Hulk from Ang Lee's Hulk.
The latter film, released in 2003, was a critical and commercial miss, plodding through the green giant's origin story and making "only" $132.2 million at the U.S. box office off a production investment of $137 million, per Box Office Mojo stats.
The new movie, which shares its title with the 1978-1982 TV series, is termed a "new big-screen adaptation" of the Marvel comic. It's penciled in for a June 13, 2008, release. French filmmaker Louis Leterrier (The Transporter) is on board to direct.
Per Marvel, the movie will concern the Hulk being chased on account of he's the Hulk, and he scares people, and Bruce Banner trying to figure out how not to be the Hulk anymore, so he doesn't get chased or scare people. We paraphrase.
It was not known who or what will play the Hulk. In Lee's version, a CGI blob handled the part.
The 37-year-old Norton is set to become the third actor to play a Hulk-cursed Banner on screen. Bill Bixby played David Banner, the name CBS reportedly imposed upon the character, in the TV series and TV movies of the 1970s-1990s. Eric Bana played Bruce Banner, the name as creators Jack Kirby and Stan Lee intended it, in the Lee film.
The Incredible Hulk is the second of 10 planned movies to emerge from a deal between Marvel and Universal Pictures. The first film, Iron Man, began shooting in March with star Robert Downey Jr.
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