‘The Incredible Hulk’ Director Louis Leterrier Planned Grey Hulk and Red Hulks for Axed Sequel

“The Incredible Hulk” director Louis Leterrier has revealed there were plans for a potential sequel to the 2008 superhero movie.

“Yeah there was, like, a whole sequel,” Leterrier said in an interview with Comicbook.com, adding that the scrapped film would have featured variations of the Hulk. “There was, like, Grey Hulk, Red Hulks — there was a lot of good stuff that we were planning.”

Edward Norton starred as Bruce Banner in “The Incredible Hulk,” but neither he nor the film’s storyline and characters drastically influenced future Marvel Cinematic Universe projects. Instead, Mark Ruffalo took over the role of the green Goliath since 2012’s “The Avengers.”

“Hulk is a complex character within the Marvel Universe,” Letterier explained. “You want the primeval Hulk… the rage Hulk. And then when you go Grey Hulk and Smart Hulk you lose that a little bit and you get a little bit more kiddish with it.” 

Smart Hulk was introduced in 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” as an iteration of the Hulk merged with Banner’s intelligence. The character later reappeared in the Disney+ miniseries “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.”

During the interview, Leterrier admitted there was a dichotomy between Ruffalo’s Hulk — along with his Smart Hulk persona — and his own vision for the character.

“But that was the fun of where I was in my movie, with the access to consciousness and all that stuff. That was really fun. And that’s what I was aiming to do,” Leterrier explained. “But take my time with it. Because there’s so many characters they want it all fast. I like ‘She-Hulk,’ but then, you know, yoga between Hulk and… I was like ‘Okay! Yeah, we’re very far from my Hulk.’” 

By Michaela Zee

Photo: Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection