GRRR! HULK RECAST! Ed Norton won't return for The Avengers

Looks like the carefully weaved network of Marvel movies leading up to The Avengers is coming undone already. The Hulk will return, but Ed Norton will not. But who will? Eh screw it, who even cares?

One thing Marvel consistently get right in their movies is the casting - always interesting, never predictable, they always seem to get their leading men spot on. Unfortunately for Marvel, when they picked Edward Norton to star in their Hulk reboot, they didn't figure on their leading man trying to meddle with their movie. Consequently, the relationship between studio and star went sour, and Norton left on bad terms. Plus the movie kinda sucked. Win-win!

The knock-on effect for Marvel, and indeed for fans of Marvel's movies, is that Norton will now definitely not be appearing as Bruce Banner in The Avengers. HitFix are reporting that the studio are going for a cheaper option aka some chump nobody.

Well that's just great. The whole deal with Marvel's pre-Avengers movies is that they all link up with each other. Now we're all going to have to pretend that Ed Norton never existed. Whoever takes over as Bannerhulk is going to have to pull off one hell of a Norton impression, and unless they can shrink their eyeballs and boost their weaseliness by a good 50%, I doubt it'll fly.

One option discussed has been for Hulk to only appear in his jolly green giant form, which would make sense from a casting point of view, as computer pixels work for very little pay and don't tend to want final cut.