HULK Star Eric Bana Seemingly Closes The Door On Returning As Bruce Banner In DEADPOOL &

Ang Lee’s Hulk was released when the superhero movie genre was very much in its infancy. It joined a small club of early 2000s titles that includes Blade, X-Men, Spider-Man, and Daredevil, but the filmmaker’s unique approach to adapting the Jade Giant for the screen split opinions. 

Quite literally attempting to bring a comic book to life in a movie, the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon director didn’t lack ambition with his approach, but the technology wasn’t really there to pull off either his vision for the character or those comic book panel-inspired screen splits. 

A moderate hit at the box office with a $245 million haul, the movie remains a disappointment in the eyes of many, including Lee himself. Five years later, Marvel Studios released The Incredible Hulk, and retained elements of this Green Goliath’s origin story (albeit with Edward Norton replacing Eric Bana). 

Bana has already said he “can’t see” himself playing Bruce Banner in Avengers: Secret Wars and has now shot down the possibility of unleashing The Hulk in this summer’s Deadpool & Wolverine.

“I can’t see that happening. I’m sorry, Jess,” he said on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show. “Hugh’s a very close friend of mine…still can’t see that happening.”

It feels a little bit like he’s deflecting here, especially as his answer is so similar to the one he gave back in January. Then again, it’s possible Bana is just sick and tired of being asked about a role he’s no doubt put behind him seeing as more than two decades have passed.

Elsewhere in the interview, the actor was asked whether working with Lee was a bigger draw than playing The Hulk. 

“A hundred percent. Yes,” Bana admitted. “At first, I was like, ‘No way. It’s not my kind of bag. I don’t think this is me,’ and then we thought more and more about it, and I just, because also I didn’t have a script when I said yes, so I was like, ‘Well, what’s this gonna be like?’ so I really, really was putting all my chips in the Ang Lee basket on that film.”

“I knew was it’s gonna be very, very different, and also, back then, it wasn’t a thing. The Marvel universe hadn’t started yet.”

He added, “You didn’t go and do those films thinking you were gonna do more than one movie. That paradigm didn’t exist, so you’re right. It was very, very much driven by wanting to work with someone like Ang.”

Something tells us Bana isn’t going to be swayed by the lure of a cameo in Deadpool & Wolverine or Avengers: Secret Wars, meaning the odds of us seeing him share the screen with Norton and Mark Ruffalo are looking increasingly slim.

Check out the full interview with the Hulk star in the player below.