In a
surprising announcement at Marvel, it's been revealed that
Guillermo del Toro will be producing and developing ABC's new live-action hour-long series based on
The Incredible Hulk. From the sounds of things he's going to be as hands on with Hulk as
Frank Darabont has been with AMC's
The Walking Dead where he has acted as showrunner and the director of the pilot. Del Toro is working on the Hulk pilot script with
David Eick (Battlestar Galactica, Bionic Woman) and one of the best things for ABC in bringing in such a strong creative voice is that the Hulk won't be purely CGI as the previous two big screen efforts. Del Toro is a 'man in suit' guy which hit a monstrous orgy in
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army and we would expect him to be heavily involved in the production design of this new show. When you hire del Toro, you land yourself a gigantic creative voice with unbridled enthusiasm.
Depending on his availability, Del Toro will direct the pilot which is hoping to air around the Autumn of 2012 - after the third actor to play Bruce Banner in the last 10 ten years (
Mark Ruffalo) appears in
The Avengers. It's still expected that this Hulk show will be a separate universe to the movies with a new actor playing the title character.
Fleming writes;
Details of the premise are sketchy but I hear that the series will follow an origin story. In it, physicist Bruce Banner, whose alter ego is the green and raging Hulk, will be in his mid-twenties, less reactive and more energized as the world is still his oyster.
Nobody does monsters quite like Del Toro...