Edward Norton Talks His Departure As The HULK- "I Wanted More Diversity"
Edward Norton, while promoting his newest movie Birdman on NPR's Fresh Air, took the time to speak on his 2010 departure with Marvel Studios and how it benefited him. Hit the jump to check it out!
Edward Norton, the man who portrayed the Hulk, Bruce Banner in the 2008 Hulk film and was then replaced by Mark Ruffalo in the 2012 Avengers film, talked about how things went when he departed with Marvel in 2010, and told how it was something he wanted to do. Check it out!
"My feeling was that I experimented and experienced what I wanted to. I really, really enjoyed it. And yet, I looked at the balance of time in life that one spends not only making those sorts of films but then especially putting them out, and the obligations that rightly come with that. There were just a lot of things—I wanted more diversity. I sort of chose to continue on my path of having a diversity of experiences. Maybe on some unconscious level, I didn’t want to have an association with one thing in any way degrade my effectiveness as an actor, in characters. I think you can sort of do anything once, but if you do it too many times, it can become a suit that’s hard to take off, in other peoples’ eyes. And if I had continued on with it, I wouldn’t have made Moonrise Kingdom, or Grand Budapest, or Birdman, because those all overlapped with [Avengers]. And those were more the priority for me, but I continue to be a fan and I’m really, really happy I got to do it once."
Norton above states that it was really his choice to leave Marvel. Is that true? Did Marvel really give him the boot? We will never know, all we know that Norton was replaced by Ruffalo, nothing more. Sound off below with your thoughts!
The Incredible Hulk is a 2008 American superhero film featuring the Marvel Comics character the Hulk, produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Universal Pictures. It is the second installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film was directed by Louis Leterrier, with a screenplay by Zak Penn. It stars Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, Tim Blake Nelson, Ty Burrell, and William Hurt. In The Incredible Hulk, a new backstory is established where Bruce Banner becomes the Hulk as an unwitting pawn in a military scheme to reinvigorate the supersoldier program through gamma radiation. On the run, he attempts to cure himself of the Hulk before he is captured by General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross, but his worst fears are realized when power-hungry soldier Emil Blonsky becomes a similar but more bestial creature.