Now this is news right out of left field… and very good news at that. It appears one of todays best actors, Edward Norton, has been cast to take up the giant green mantel and play Bruce Banner in the next The Incredible Hulk movie.
The good folks over at Superherohype give us the following:
Edward Norton has been set by Marvel Studios to play Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk. The Louis Leterrier-directed film will be distributed by Universal Pictures on June 13, 2008. The movie will shoot this summer in Toronto. Norton takes over a role played in the Ang Lee-directed Hulk by Eric Bana. Though that film opened strongly, it didn’t fare as well as other Marvel efforts, including Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four and, most recently, Ghost Rider.
This new vision for the Hulk now has 3 seriously positive things going for it:
1) Edward Norton obviously (although do keep in mind that the last version of the Hulk had an amazing actor too, Eric Bana)
2) Louis Leterrier is directing – Normally that’s nothing to jump up and down about… but the man who did “The Transporter” films is most likely going to give Hulk fans exactly what they want… more “HULK SMASH”!
3) Zak Penn wrote the screenplay – The guy who already worked on a couple of the X-Men films knows how to handle comic book material.
As most of you know, I’m one of the few people on the planet who actually liked the last Hulk movie. No, it wasn’t at all what I was expecting… but I thought it was a refreshing take on the comic book genre formula. It was different… more intelligent. But that being said, I can totally understand why some people hated it. This new vision should make those people (and me too) quite happy.
