Short Version: I really enjoy the Marvel Studios/Lionsgate animated films, and the latest is fun, but it begs the question: can there be too much Hulk vs. action?

The latest animated offering from Marvel and Lionsgate is actually a “two-fer,” Hulk vs. Wolverine and Hulk vs. Thor.  The films clocks in at 37 minutes (Wolverine) and 45 minutes (Thor), and they’re enjoyable for the most part.  But after a while, I got sick of Hulk just smashing everything.

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[UPDATE: Marvel was kind enough to provide additional information about their animated projects.]

The Marvel Animation Group panel at this year’s New York Comic Con was a rally for support– Cort Lane, director of development for Marvel Animation repeatedly asked for fans to $upport Marvel Animated projects, so that the company could continue to grow and provide fans with animated shows and features they want to see.

Reading between the lines I got somewhat of an impression that this is an important juncture for Marvel Animation. Personally, I’ve always been more of a DC Animation fan, though this panel did give me one or two reasons to consider making a switch.

There was much joy and celebration when Marvel Comics formed its own studio for the purpose of producing films based on their extensive library of characters. They would have creative control over how their cadre of superheroes would be portrayed on the big screen - as opposed to handing the rights over to Sony Pictures or Fox Studios.

While Sony did all right with the first two Spider-Man movies, the third was pretty much reviled by hard core fans - and Fox, while they didn’t do badly on the first two X-Men films, the third was a disappointment. And of course let’s not forget Electra and Daredevil which where underwhelming to say the least.

It’s Wednesday so it’s time for our weekly open discussion, but as it happens this one is hitting on the last day of 2008! Can you believe this year is over already?

And what an incredible year it’s been for movies… 2008 was a banner year for superhero movie fans with the likes of The Dark Knight, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Hellboy 2, and yes - even Hancock and Punisher: War Zone.

Other great genre films included Rambo, Cloverfield (do you even remember that opened this year?!), Tropic Thunder, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Kung Fu Panda and more.

MTV recently caught up with writer/director/actor Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother Where Art Thou?) and picked his gamma-contaminated brain about reprising his role as Dr. Samuel Sterns in the rumored-to-be-happening sequel to this summer’s moderately successful Marvel reboot, The Incredible Hulk.

NOTE: The interview with Nelson was a follow-up to an interview MTV did with super-producer Gale Ann Hurd (The Terminator Trilogy, Hulk, Punisher: War Zone), in which Hurd made it clear that it is her intention to see Incredible Hulk 2 make it into theaters, ideally with all of the original cast in tow.

Kevin Feige, President of Production for Marvel Studios spoke with MTV News earlier this week about the success of this summer’s The Incredible Hulk.

Feige discussed the risks in doing another Hulk-centered film and how it paid off financially and critically compared to Ang Lee’s Hulk of 2003. Although, not even close to the success or critical acclaim of The Dark Knight or Iron Man, Feige says they now have a Hulk they are proud of and that fans can enjoy going forward. He details the two objectives Marvel had with the new adaptation of Bruce Banner’s alter-ego:

Marvel Studios has us already talking about a movie not set to be released until 2011: The Avengers. That film will no doubt be of epic proportions.

Director Louis Leterrier, who brought us The Incredible Hulk, suggested to MTV News (back in June) that they couldn’t find a villain that could challenge the teaming of Iron Man, Ant-Man, Thor and Captain America.

And his solution was for them to use his.

Looks like Ed Norton and Marvel are still not playing nice. In an interview with MTV News, the star of this summer’s The Incredible Hulk film said that Marvel hasn’t communicated with him at all about reprising the Bruce Banner role in the planned Avengers team-up film or another solo feature.

As we all know, Hollywood is the epicenter of not only fads, but also ripping off copying what works from other studios. We’ve all seen this before many times. One studio puts out a successful movie in some genre and within 6-9 months we see a bunch of movies coming out trying to capitalize on the popularity of the first one.

I know that people have asked why we don’t have a regular podcast here at Screen Rant. I made an attempt about a year ago to do a weekly podcast before we had a great stable of writers, and I found it extremely difficult to do alone.

So what about now, you ask? Now it’s an issue of time, or rather not enough of it, plus trying to coordinate a time that most of us can get together when we are located across the country (with Niall in the UK!).

It’s almost September and that means that the big summer movie season of 2008 is finally over - but what a summer it’s been!

2008 delivered the kind of summer that superhero and action movie geeks dream of - this is the year that brought us three bonafide superhero movies: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and what was that third one… oh yeah: The Dark Knight.

Marvel Comics has done a bang-up job expanding their brand over the course of the last decade. After many stalled attempts to break into the realm of television, with bland animated show (Spider-Man), after bland animated show (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk), all throughout the 90’s, Marvel decided to leave the cartoon stuff to rival DC and start the Millennium off right by conquering the multiplex.

Well, I wrote a post about the cover of the forthcoming Incredible Hulk DVD and a lot of you seemed to be into it, so I’m following that post up with this: details about which features will be included on both the Blu-Ray and DVD versions of The Incredible Hulk.

You can head over to Slash Film for the full tech specs, but don’t get too giddy; no confirmation that Edward Norton’s cut of the film will be included on either the DVD or Blu-Ray.The only things specified in Slash Film’s tech specs are the standard “deleted scenes,” along with an “alternate opening.” Could mean nothing, could mean everything.

Hey guys, the cover for The Incredible Hulk 3-disc special edition DVD has been revealed. All you fans of the Not-so-jolly Green Giant take a peek inside and let us know if the cover is cool enough to be included in the hallowed ranks of your DVD collection.

According to Den of Geek, Incredible Hulk director Louis Leterrier has been letting all the beans spill from Marvel’s bag of tricks concerning the cast of the Avengers movie, as well as the current state of Iron Man 2. Is the Frenchman giving us fact, or just more fiction? I’ll let you be the judge of that.

Rumor is beginning to circulate about which of its top-shelf heroes Marvel plans to recruit for the upcoming, and much-hyped, Avengers movie. Some choices are obvious, due to not-so-subtle foreshadows dropped in both Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk. And with the internet recently abuzz with news that Marvel studios was pushing to snag A-list stars for its Captain America movie, that character’s inclusion in the Avengers project is certain. So that’s three Avengers we can expect to see, but who else will make the roster?

Anyone who thought The Incredible Hulk was going to pull in $60-$100 million last weekend were victims of nerdgasming - i.e. thinking a film was going to be huge because you were excited about it and the Internet was talking it up none.stop.

The funny thing I flat-out told people it was going to be like Batman Begins and have a solid (but not record-breaking) start around the $50 million region. And if it does well, it will be via legs and word-of-mouth after the opening weekend. So of course, I was immediately told, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

And now after the reboot (a solid film you should check out if you haven’t already) opened to $55 million, I’m hearing the exact same people who earlier dismissed my lack of “knowledge” now comparing The Incredible Hulk to… you guessed it… Batman Begins. I hate to say I told ya so…

A couple of weeks ago I posed the question: Will The Incredible Hulk defeat Iron Man? on its opening weekend at the box office.

Guess not.

Although The Incredible Hulk pulled in a respectable $55 million on this, its opening weekend, that was no where near Iron Man’s approximately $100 million.

Unfortunately, Hulk underperformed slightly this weekend compared to the $60-70MM the studio hoped for, but let’s see how it does next weekend and thereafter. On the other hand, the abysmally awful The Happening actually exceeded expectations, bringing in $30.5MM. I can’t wait to see THAT movie’s numbers next weekend - if there’s any justice in the world it’ll bring in less than $16MM and go down from there.

On the other hand I have a feeling that good word of mouth will keep The Incredible Hulk afloat with probably another $33MM next weekend.

My bud over at ReelComix.com let me know about this yesterday but it’s slow today so I thought I’d post this up for you. It’s a clip from Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC doing a riff on The Incredible Hulk, and Ed Norton is in actually in it and adding to the fun.

The clip is VERY funny… check it out!

Short version: HULK SMASH!

Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? If you’re expecting a movie as fun and great as Iron Man, you’re going to be disappointed. However if you’re a big fan of the Hulk in the comics and/or in the old TV series and hated Ang Lee’s version you are going to LOVE this movie.

As I sat and watched the opening credits, it occurred to me that the best way to describe The Incredible Hulk is to call it a semi-sequel to the last film. They actually did something very wise during the opening: Instead of taking up a significant portion of the film re-creating Bruce Banner’s origin as the Hulk, it was done via a series of quick scenes during the opening credits. As soon as the credits are done, we’re plunged right into Banner’s present-day life on the run.

We just received some surprising information from MovieTickets.com regarding The Incredible Hulk movie which opens a week from this Friday on June 13th. It seems that according to their tracking, Hulk may actually end up with even better opening weekend box office numbers than Iron Man, which by all accounts knocked it out of the park with its close to $100 million opening.

They collect data during the movie ticket purchase process including a “buzz factor” (OK, the real name is “Aided Awareness” but that’s boring). They say that buzz factor score for Iron Man was 36%… and for The Incredible Hulk, it’s currently at 49%! So fully one third more people are aware there’s a new Hulk movie coming out than knew about Iron Man, even with it’s uber-marketing campaign. That’s quite a change from just a month ago where it seemed like every person I talked to who didn’t follow movie websites said “There’s a new ‘Hulk’ movie coming out?”

All right, now this is officially cool and just another reason to believe that Marvel knows what the hell they’re doing when it comes to bringing their characters to the screen. First we had Iron Man with a non-action guy (Jon Favreau) for a director and outside the box casting (Robert Downey Jr.). We all know how THAT movie turned out.

Now comes word that Lou Ferrigno, the beloved bodybuilder-turned-actor who played the part of the Hulk in the old TV series, will be the voice of The Incredible Hulk in the upcoming film!

Our pals over at IGN.com have sent us some new video from The Incredible Hulk. It involves a battle between a super-agile Emil Blonsky and the Hulk. It would seem that Blonsky was treated with the serum and it seemed to work beautifully at first, and then something goes horribly wrong to turn him into the Abomination.

The scene looks kind of odd out of context, but I’m sure that it works within the movie.

Check out the clip below.

Ok, ok… you guys have been asking for the new TV spots for The Incredible Hulk so here you go.
I figure it’s the least I can do… this poor movie has had such a lack of marketing and publicity I feel like I need to help out a bit. And you - go out and tell your friends that yes, there is a NEW Hulk movie coming out and it looks COOL.

Don’t quite feel that way yet? Check out the three TV spots below and then come back and talk to me.

[UPDATE: Maybe the Hulk will look better than we thought in the upcoming movie, check out the new facial close-up below.]

With the rising interest in The Incredible Hulk movie following the release of the latest trailer I thought this was worth checking out.

There has been a lot of discussion regarding the “look” of the Hulk in the upcoming film - both as a standalone and as compared to the Ang Lee version. Well /Film has posted an image of a fan-made CGI model that looks like it’s far better than either of the movie versions (based on what I’ve seen so far).

So it looks like the marketing machine is finally getting in gear for The Incredible Hulk. We’ve got an new poster and a new trailer for the film which shows more action than we’ve seen before.

I’m hoping that this Hulk film ends up surprising everyone and exceeding expectations. I’d love to see a kick-butt Incredible Hulk movie as a follow up to the previous, much slower moving version.

Check out both the new trailer and the poster below.

After the huge opening weekend of Iron Man, nobody should be surprised to hear a Shellhead sequel has been greenlit for a summer 2010 release - April 30, 2010 to be exact.

No, ladies and germs, the surprise is that Marvel Films has come outright and announced their entire slate of projects from now to 2011.

Thanks to my bud over at ReelComix, below you’ll find the brand-spankin’ new trailer for The Incredible Hulk.

Check it!

Now that all the negative buzz is finished (well…Universal and Marvel hope that it is) it’s time to unleash the marketing campaign for The Incredible Hulk.

Empire magazine has two new pictures from the new Hulk reboot and they show they size and scale of the new Hulk and they have a very Mulder and Scully-esque picture of Ed Norton and Liv Tyler standing in a laboratory - wow!

If you can’t get enough Hulk and you want to spend your hard earned cash on Hulk merchandise you can check out the film’s promotional parteners which include - Burger King, 7-Eleven, Kmart, Best Buy, Pringles and Sargento, Airheads candy and Hasbro toys.

To see the new pictures in their full glory continue reading.

[This post has been updated with new information. See below.]

It was a double-edged sword when Edward Norton (American History X and Fight Club) was cast as Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk.

On the one hand, the guy’s a brilliant actor; arguably one of the best of his generation - up there with Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale in my opinion.

On the other hand, he’s had a well-known (and publicized) reputation for being “hard to work with” - to put it nicely, ladies and gentlemen.