Marvel Comics has announced that Edward Norton is Bruce Banner in Transporter director Louis Leterrier’s big-screen Hulk reboot. The film will be called The Incredible Hulk; it shoots this summer in Toronto.
Norton’s work has always been impeccable, so I’m sure this will be good if only because of his involvement. And the script must be something pretty special to attract someone of Norton’s caliber. (If you haven’t seen The Illusionist, please do so.)
Anything’s got to be better than Ang Lee’s 2003 clunker, which is only slightly better in my comic-book book than Superman Returns.
My favorite Hulk movies are the The Incredible Hulk Returns and Trial of the Incredible Hulk, which aired on television in the late 1980s and reunited Lou Ferrigno with the late, great Bill Bixby. The first featured Thor (Eric Allan Kramer) and the second featured Daredevil (Rex Smith).
A few years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kramer, Smith, Ferrigno and Death of the Incredible Hulk co-star Elizabeth Gracen for a Bill Bixby/Hulk retrospective I did for Impact.
You can read all of those interviews right here:
Interviews: Bill Bixby remembered
I’m really proud of these; the interviews went so well that the articles wrote themselves, and everybody I talked to couldn’t possibly have been nicer. In fact, Ferrigno had to reschedule our interview several times, and each time he called me personally to explain why instead of having his publicist do it. That’s class. (In the Ferrigno segment of the interview, he talks about what the next Hulk TV movie would have been if Bixby hadn’t passed away.)
Best of luck, Mr. Norton! Bill Bixby’s shoes are impossible to fill, but I know you’ll come up with something unique and special. You’ve got the chops and I know you’ll Hulk out like a champ.
The Incredible Hulk picks up the theater near you and lobs it at a tank on June 13, 2008.
True Story
When Edward Norton played the title role in The Illusionist last year, he got into character by pretending he was playing another Marvel Comics character, Dr. Strange.