Here’s another semi-non-news story. So Edward Norton had a falling out with Marvel around the time of the release of “The Incredible Hulk” in the spring of 2008. He had co-written some of the script, had several ideas about editing and then was allegedly locked out of the editing room a few short weeks before the film premiere because Marvel reportedly just wanted lots of action which they really did get in the last half.
The character-based first half of the picture really does feel like its Ed Norton’s; the second half which seems to take off it’s thinking cap off in favor of brawn sadly and definitely feels like director Louis Leterrier’s film.
We digress. After the film came out, Norton barely did press and his cynical comments and feelings on the matter seemed to suggest a bruised relationship between the studio and actor (Marvel themselves once sounded doubtful that he would return). But in the following months and time has past and wounds have been relatively forgotten Norton has seemingly slowly inched towards a conciliatory tone.
And in his most optimistic thought since the whole ‘Hulk’ debacle, he’s told MTV that he’d be willing to revisit the role in “The Avengers” film. “Yeah, oh yeah,” he said. “The thing about [Marvel’s] universe that’s fun is that it all cross-pollinates. Even when I was working on the script , I tried to plug in the whole Super-Soldier Serum from Captain America.”
Norton is also done with the idea that’s been thrown around of The Hulk playing the villain in the ‘Avengers’ film. “He kind of was, not in the books, but in the comics there was always a tension between the rest of the superhero community and he was always this problem,” he explained. “They treat him as this problem. I don’t know, I think that’s a fun way to go with it.”
So there’s your FYI for the day. Ed Norton: not completely opposed to playing the Hulk as villain or hero again. However, he’s not obligated by contract, we don’t think (or at least from what we recall of the imbroglio last year) and Marvel could just pull a Terrence Howard if they wanted to. But Marvel is hopefully reading and putting that thought in a drawer somewhere. It’s still probably too far off to tell where “The Avengers,” story will land, but since “Iron Man 2,” is essentially in the can and “Thor” is ostensibly written, we’re hoping whomever is writing “The First Avenger: Captain America,” (Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely are listed as the writers on IMDB, not sure if that’s out-of-date or not), are in contact with the other filmmakers, the writers and Zak Penn who is writing ‘Avengers,’ because you’d think the final film before the series-team-up picture would have strong ties to that movie.
Last we heard “Captain America,” is sort of at sea. Don’t be surprised if new creative types are brought on board at some point.
