#David Duchovny Almost Played the MCU’s Incredible Hulk

While the idea of Mark Ruffalo playing Hulk in the MCU was initially dismissed, The X-Files’ David Duchovny almost beat Ed Norton to the role.

Considering his popularity and importance to the MCU, it is still hard to believe that Mark Ruffalo was not the first actor to portray the Hulk in the Infinity Saga, with Ed Norton having played the not-so-jolly green giant first in 2008’s second MCU film, The Incredible Hulk. Of course while Norton dipped out after just the one movie, making way for arguably the best iteration of Bruce Banner ever put on screen, it seems that there was another name in the early running to play the good doctor even before Norton and that was The X-Files star David Duchovny.

When Marvel was casting the role of Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk, both Norton and Duchovny were the two names that were in contention for the role. Of course, Duchovny had experience with genre movies, having appeared in big screen outings of The X-Files and Evolution, and already had a huge legion of fans behind him at the time, and that was a big part Marvel’s interest in both him and Norton. In fact, at the time The Incredible Hulk was due to film, the second X-Files movie, I Want to Believe, was already in production in roughly the same location in Canada, and there was consideration given to delaying Hulk’s shooting just to accommodate Duchovny’s X-Files shoot.

In the end, as we know, the role was given to Ed Norton, and in many ways, it became one of the few casting missteps made by Marvel over the last 13 years. There were a number of issues with Norton that were not apparent until the movie was in production, but their collective impact meant that Norton continuing in the role beyond that first appearance was pretty much untenable from the beginning. Norton was a self-professed Hulk fan, and that meant he had certain ideas about what the character should be which led to frequent clashes with Marvel Studios during filming when the actor reportedly made script rewrites based on what he felt Hulk should be doing at certain points.

While Duchovny is best known for his genre roles, the actor has said in the past that he is “not a comic book guy” which, had he been cast, would have possibly avoided those kinds of issues, but, just like Norton, would also have probably seen him duck out of the franchise early on. So would the overall outcome have been any different by the time The Avengers came around, or would it still have been Mark Ruffalo’s time to shine?

When it comes to Ruffalo, what is even more bizarre is that The Incredible Hulk director Louis Leterrier actually suggested Ruffalo for the role in the original movie, but the idea was thrown out by the studio because of the actor’s reputation as a star of serious movies, and he was not as well known as Ed Norton. Both aspects of that argument seem a bit redundant in hindsight, and as Ruffalo is set to return again in 2022’s She-Hulk series, with the potential for a new solo Hulk movie rumored to also be in the works, there are very few who don’t believe in the end the right man got the job eventually. This news was originally reported by Moviehole.

Read Next

About The Author