New ‘Incredible Hulk’ Film And Television Series Coming? Lou Ferrigno Thinks So

After Edward Norton’s The Incredible Hulk was met with underwhelming box office success in 2008, raking in only $263,000 worldwide (compared to Iron Man‘s $585,000), many thought the probability of the big green goon making a standalone return to the cinemas was slim to none. It was only after Hulk made his Avengers debut that audiences finally seemed to warm up to the idea of the Hulk, though Marvel has been very careful on outlining the future of the character film-wise.

Despite all this, former Hulk Lou Ferrigno seems fairly confident that The Incredible Hulk will be hitting both the big and small screen in due time, he reveals when asked by Film Fad who he’d choose to play as The Hulk today.

“Well to tell you the truth they plan to do a TV series someday and it will probably be CGI, I don’t think you’ll ever see a human Hulk again. Because with the technology people would rather see something that is a little more animated like CGI… [But] that’s a long way from now because I think down the road, I think in another year, they’re going to film a solo Hulk movie. But I think the series can happen if they finish doing The Avengers or The Hulk movie, that’s my guess for now.”

Many fans would be delighted if this were all to come true, to be sure, but as Lou Ferrigno’s claims seem to be based on little more than conjecture, it isn’t something we can count on anytime in the near future.

If there’s been a tough nut to crack for Marvel, it’s been the Hulk. While Ang Lee’s Hulk in 2003 hit well with critics, it was panned by fans as boring and too introverted to be truly representative of the comic. The Incredible Hulk, to many fans, was a huge step up from that, but the lack of patronage from general audiences seemed to close the door on the franchise pretty quickly. The Avengers may have helped warm audiences up to The Hulk, but even Joss Whedon finds the character to be a tricky proposition (via Screen Rant).

“But it would be very, very hard. Hulk is a tricky son of a bitch. He’s the Claudio of superheroes. Because the problem is it’s a very popular character, but it’s not a superhero. Half of it’s a superhero, half of it’s a werewolf. And you can’t structure it like a superhero movie, you can’t light it like a superhero movie. How do you develop that? It would be extremely difficult. The one thing you would have in your favor would be Mark Ruffalo. But right now I don’t know if they have plans to do that or not, because he works so well as part of a greater whole, but by himself, it’s tough. I don’t envy the guys who went before.”

That interview was back in early 2013, but its problems still echo today. That being said, the one plus we have today is that in a world full of superhero films, it does the industry well to throw the taste of another genre into superhero movies. It worked well with the political thriller-esque Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and it worked well with the space opera-esque The Guardians Of The Galaxy, both of which went on to break records. Perhaps now is the time to finally break the Hulk using a different, unexpected genre (horror, perhaps?).

The folks over at Marvel have their work cut out for them, but if their past is any indication, it may be a risk worth taking.

Thoughts on Lou Ferrigno’s claims? Do you see more standalone Hulk in Marvel’s future?