Development After the release of
Ang Lee's
Hulk, screenwriter
James Schamus was planning a sequel which would continue the story featuring the Grey Hulk. He was also considering the
Leader and the Abomination as villains. Marvel wanted the Abomination because he would be an actual threat to the Hulk, unlike General Ross. During the filming of
Hulk, producer Avi Arad had a target May 2005 theatrical release date. On January 18, 2006, Arad confirmed Marvel Studios would be providing the money for
The Incredible Hulks production budget, with Universal distributing, because Universal did not meet the deadline for filming a sequel. Marvel felt it would be better to deviate from Ang Lee's style to continue the franchise, arguing his film was like a
parallel universe one-shot comic book, and their next film needed to be, in Kevin Feige's words, "
really starting the Marvel Hulk franchise". Producer Gale Anne Hurd also felt the film had to meet what "everyone expects to see from having read the comics and seen the TV series".
Pre-production Louis Leterrier, who enjoyed the TV series as a child and liked the first film, had expressed interest in directing the
Iron Man film adaptation.
Jon Favreau had taken that project, so Marvel offered him the Hulk. Leterrier was reluctant as he was unsure if he could replicate Lee's style, but Marvel explained that was not their intent. Leterrier's primary inspiration was
Jeph Loeb and
Tim Sale's
Hulk: Gray (a retelling of the character's first appearance). He replicated every comic book panel that he pinned-up during pre-production, from the many comics he browsed, in the final film. Leterrier said that he planned to show Bruce Banner's struggle with the monster within him, while Feige added the film would explore "that element of wish fulfillment, of overcoming an injustice or a bully and tapping into a strength that you didn't quite realize you had in yourself". Arad also said the film would be "a lot more of a love story between Bruce Banner and Betty Ross". In May 2006, Arad left Marvel Studios to become an independent producer. Because he was on staff when the deal was made for
The Incredible Hulk, he retained producer credit on the film.
Zak Penn, who wrote a draft of the first film in 1996, said the film would follow up
Hulk, but stressed it would be more tonally similar to the TV show and
Bruce Jones'
run on the comic. He compared his script to
Aliens, which was a very different film from
Alien, but still in the same continuity. He included two scenes from his 1996 script: Banner jumping from a helicopter to trigger a transformation, and realizing he is unable to have sex with Betty. After the studio rejected a treatment by another screenwriter in 2006, Penn wrote three drafts before departing in early 2007 to promote his film
The Grand.
Edward Norton began discussions to play Banner in April 2006, and arranged a deal that included him as both an actor and a writer, with a screenplay draft he was contractually obligated to turn in within a month. He did so, and continued to polish his draft as late as halfway through principal photography. In November 2006, a June 13, 2008, release date was set. Leterrier acknowledged the only remaining similarity between the two films was Bruce Banner hiding in South America, and that the film was a unique reboot, as generally audiences would have expected another forty-minute
origin story. There were previous discussions to set the first act in Thailand. Leterrier felt audiences were left restless waiting for the character to arrive in Ang Lee's film. Feige commented, "we didn't want to tell the origin story again, because we thought people were so familiar with it, which is why we didn't tell that... One reason we made
Incredible Hulk was to get Hulk into the
[Marvel Cinematic Universe] canon." The end of the film occurs at
Columbia University, and Leterrier was interested in naming it Empire State University, as a reference to
Peter Parker, but was unable to since
Sony Pictures controls the film rights of Spider-Man. Shortly after the release of
The Incredible Hulk, Gale Anne Hurd commented on the uncertainty of its relationship with Ang Lee's
Hulk film. "We couldn't quite figure out how to term this ... It's kind of a reboot and it's kind of sequel." Hurd said that "requel", a
portmanteau of "reboot" and "sequel", was a "perfect" description for the film. Feige clarified that the two films are not connected, noting how events shown in the opening credits sequence of
The Incredible Hulk contradict
Hulk. Norton explained his decision to ignore Lee's origin story: "I don't even like the phrase 'origin story', and I don't think in great literature and great films that explaining the roots of the story doesn't mean it comes in the beginning." "Audiences know this story," he added, "[so] deal with it artfully." He wanted to "have revelations even in the third act about what set this whole thing in motion". The new origin story references
Ultimate Marvel's take on the Hulk, which also had him created in an attempt to make super soldiers. Norton removed
Rick Jones and toned down
S.H.I.E.L.D.'s presence. He also added the scene where Banner attempts to extract a cure from a flower and his e-mailing with Samuel Sterns, which references Bruce Jones' story. Norton rewrote scenes every day. Ultimately, the
Writers Guild of America decided to credit the script solely to Penn, who argued Norton had not dramatically changed his script. Journalist
Anne Thompson explained "The Guild tends to favor plot, structure and pre-existing characters over dialogue." Penn said in 2008, "I wasn't happy with [Norton] coming to Comic-Con saying that he wrote the script." Before either Penn or Norton joined the project, an anonymous screenwriter wrote a draft and lobbied for credit.
Filming Leterrier had to direct four
units with a broken foot. Filming began on July 9, 2007. Shooting primarily took place in
Toronto, because mayor
David Miller is a Hulk fan and promised to be helpful to the crew when closing
Yonge Street for four nights in September to shoot Hulk and Blonsky's climactic fight. Despite messing up the street with explosives and overturned burning vehicles, the crew would clean it up within twenty minutes so business could continue as normal each day. The first action sequence shot was the Culver University battle, which was filmed at the
University of Toronto and
Morningside Park. The filmmakers built a glass wall over a walkway at the university for when the soldiers trap Banner inside to smoke him out. There was also shooting in the
Financial District. A factory in
Hamilton, Ontario, which was due for demolition, was the interior of the Brazilian factory. The site's underground floors were used for Ross's military command center. The crew also shot part of the Hulk and Blonsky's fight on a
backlot in Hamilton. Other Canadian locations included military base
CFB Trenton and a glacier in
Bella Coola, British Columbia. Afterwards, there was a week-long shoot in
New York City and two weeks in Rio de Janeiro. While there, the crew shot at
Rocinha,
Lapa,
Tijuca Forest, and
Santa Teresa. Filming concluded in November after eighty-eight days of filming.
The Incredible Hulk joined Toronto's Green-Screen initiative, to help cut
carbon emissions and waste created during filming. Producer Gale Anne Hurd acknowledged the Hulk, being green, was a popular environmental analogy, and Norton himself is an environmentalist. Hybrid and fuel-efficient vehicles were used, with low-sulfur diesel as their energy source. The construction department used a sustainably harvested, locally sourced
yellow pine instead of
lauan for the sets, and also used zero- or low-
VOC paint. The wood was generally recycled or given to environmental organizations, and paint cans were handed to waste management. In addition, they used cloth bags, biodegradable food containers, china and silverware food utensils, a stainless steel mug for each production crew member, a contractor who removed bins, recycled paper, biodegradable soap and cleaners in the trailers and production offices, and the sound department used rechargeable batteries.
The Incredible Hulk became the first blockbuster film to receive the
Environmental Media Association's Green Seal, which is displayed during the end credits.
Post-production Editing Seventy minutes of footage, mostly dealing with the origin, were not included in the final cut. Much of this back-story was unscripted and the filmmakers were never sure of including it in the final cut, and had considered releasing some of these clips on the internet. Editor
Kyle Cooper, creator of the Marvel logo (with the flipping pages) and the montage detailing
Iron Man's biography in that film, edited together much of this footage into the opening credits. Leterrier explained a negative test screening, where flashbacks were placed across the film that the audience found too similar to
Hulk, had resulted in compressing these to the film's start. This replaced the original opening, where Banner comes to the
Arctic to commit
suicide. When the scene ends, in an instant the frozen body of
Captain America is partially seen in the ice. Leterrier said he did not want this scene to be lost amid the opening montage. Associate producer
Stephen Broussard opined that the scene really worked, but given the test audience's dislike for such an opening, the filmmakers decided to move on from the planned opening and instead open the film with Bruce Banner living in Brazil after a recap telling his origin story. Norton and Leterrier disputed with the producers over the final running time: they wanted it to be near 135 minutes, while the producers wanted the film to be under two hours. This was made public, and rumors spread that Norton "made it clear he won't cooperate with publicity plans if he's not happy with the final product". Norton dismissed this: "Our healthy process [of collaboration], which is and should be a private matter, was misrepresented publicly as a 'dispute', seized on by people looking for a good story, and has been distorted to such a degree that it risks distracting from the film itself, which Marvel, Universal and I refuse to let happen. It has always been my firm conviction that films should speak for themselves and that knowing too much about how they are made diminishes the magic of watching them."
Visual effects Leterrier cited
Andy Serkis's
motion capture portrayals of
Gollum and
King Kong in
The Lord of the Rings and
King Kong, respectively, as the standard he was aiming for with the Hulk and Abomination. Norton and Roth filmed 2500 takes of different movements the monsters would make, such as the Hulk's "thunder claps".
Phosphorescent face paint applied to the actors' faces and
strobe lighting would help record the most subtle mannerisms into the computer. Others, including
Cyril Raffaelli, provided motion capture for stunts and fights, after the main actors had done video referencing. Leterrier hired
Rhythm & Hues Studios to provide the
computer-generated imagery (CGI), rather than
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) who created the visual effects for Ang Lee's
Hulk. Visual effects company
Image Engine spent over a year working on a shot where Banner's gamma-irradiated blood falls through three factory floors into a bottle. 700 effects shots were created for the film. Motion capture aided in placing and timing of movements, but
key frame animation by Rhythm and Hues provided the necessary "finesse [and] superhero quality". Many of the animators and Leterrier himself provided video reference for the climactic fight.
Dale Keown's comic book artwork of the Hulk was an inspiration for his design. Leterrier felt the first Hulk had "too much fat [and] the proportions were a little off". He explained, "The Hulk is beyond perfect so there is zero grams of fat, all chiseled, and his muscle and strength defines this creature so he's like a tank."
Visual effects supervisor Kurt Williams envisioned the Hulk's physique as a
linebacker rather than a
bodybuilder. A height of nine feet was chosen for the character as they did not want him to be too inhuman. To make him more expressive, computer programs controlling the inflation of his muscles and saturation of skin color were created. Williams cited
flushing as an example of humans' skin color being influenced by their emotions. The animators felt green blood would make his skin become darker rather than lighter, and his skin tones, depending on lighting, either resemble an
olive or even gray
slate. His animation model was completed without the effects company's full knowledge of what he would be required to do: he was rigged to do whatever they imagined, in case the model was to be used for
The Avengers film. The Hulk's medium-length hair was modeled on
Mike Deodato's art. He originally had a
crew cut, but Leterrier decided flopping hair imbued him with more character. Leterrier cited
An American Werewolf in London as the inspiration for Banner's transformation, wanting to show how painful it was for him to change. As a nod to the live-action TV series, Banner's eyes change color first when he transforms. Leterrier changed the Abomination's design from the comics because he felt the audience would question why he resembled a fish or a reptile, instead of "an
über-human" like the Hulk. Rather, his hideousness is derived from being injected multiple times into his skin, muscles, and bones, creating a creature with a protruding spine and sharp bones that he can use to stab. His green skin is pale and reflects light, so it appears orange because of the surrounding fire during the climactic battle. The motion capture performers, including Roth, tried to make the character behave less gracefully than the Hulk. They modeled his posture and the way he turns his head on a shark. The character also shares Roth's tattoos. A height of eleven feet was chosen for the character. Leterrier tried to work in the character's pointed ears, but realized the Hulk would bite them off (using the
example of
Mike Tyson when he fought
Evander Holyfield), and felt ignoring that would make the Hulk come across as stupid. Leterrier had planned to use
prosthetic makeup and
animatronics to complement the
computer-generated imagery that was solely used in the previous film. The make-up artists who worked on
X-Men: The Last Stand were set to portray Blonsky's gradual transformation, which Zak Penn said would portray Blonsky "not [being] used to having these properties. Like he's much heavier, and we talked about how when he walks down the sidewalk, his weight destroys the sidewalk and he's tripping. [It's all about] the humanization of these kinds of superhero characters, showing the effects physics may actually have on [them]." Tom Woodruff Jr. of Amalgamated Dynamics (who created all the costumes for the
Alien films since
Alien 3) was in negotiations and created two busts of the Hulk and prosthetic hands to act as stand-ins for the character. A full animatronic was never created as it was decided it would complicate production to set up shots for a puppet and then a computer graphic. An animatronic was used for Sterns' mutating head, however. Destruction was mostly done practically. A model of a bottling machine was smashed through a wall for when the Hulk escapes the factory. The filmmakers used steam and
dry ice for the gas used to smoke out the Hulk, and they destroyed a real Humvee by dropping a weight on it when shooting the Culver University battle. Pipes blew fire for when the Hulk strikes down the computer-generated helicopter. When Banner falls from the helicopter to trigger the Hulk into fighting the Abomination, Norton was attached to a surface held by a bar which turned 90 degrees while the camera was pulled to the ceiling to simulate falling. Leterrier jokingly remarked that making Norton fall that distance would render him unable to act. ==Music==