As we reported before, Marvel is hoping you might forget about the recent Ang Lee version of Hulk (released only 3 years ago, btw) and instead focus your attention on the latest incarnation-- now called The Incredible Hulk. For those of you not paying attention in class, here's what we know so far:

Zak Penn, writer of X-Men: The Last Stand and the upcoming The Avengers, is handling the script. Louis Leterrier, director of The Transporter 2 and Unleashed, will be sitting in the director's chair. Eric Bana will most likely not be returning and neither will Jennifer Connolly or Nick Nolte. Or, one would assume, anyone else associated with the last film -- save Exec. Producers Stan Lee and Avi Arad. Lastly, the film will not be so much a sequel as a ... word I really don't like to use. Ok, fine, it's a re-imagining and not a sequel. There, I said it. And now we can add one more bit of news to the ever-increasing pile -- an official release date for the film.

Ready to mark your calendars? The release date is June 27th, 2008. Not too long for you, I hope. I, for one, can't wait to see what this new team comes up with. I like Zak Pen as a writer and he's done a pretty good job so far with his comic book adaptations (well, except for Elektra -- although it was far better than Daredevil -- so there you go) and Leterrier really showed his skills with action and exciting fight sequences in The Transporter films. Hopefully, the combination of those two guys can take the bad taste out of our collective mouths from the last time this character was in theaters.

Casting is currently underway for The Incredible Hulk. No word yet on a start date for filming but my guess is early next year.

So, will The Incredible Hulk be a winner, or more of the same?

[Via comic book movie]

Zak Penn loves comic books, and boy is life good for him right now. The now-prolific screen writer has helped pen the scripts for X-Men 2: X-Men United, X-Men 3: The Last Stand, Elektra and the Fantastic Four video game. Oh, and he's also on tap for scripting the sequel to the Hulk movie. AND he co-wrote the story for the upcoming X-Men video game, which ties together the stories for X2 and X3. Penn recently discussed the challenge of writing stories for a video game and a movie at the same time with Superhero Hype (you can read the full text of the interview here), and he had some interesting things to say about the connected nature of the scripts.

Penn said he was a natural fit for the video game because it allowed the game to have the same "feel" as the movie -- keeping the X-Men matching their on-screen characters and whatnot. However, Penn noted the crossover nature of the story was not as easy as he'd originally envisioned. The plan is for the game to serve as a explanatory filler between the two scripts, explaining how the plot developed and why Nightcrawler doesn't make an appearance in X3. Penn said he quickly realized it wouldn't work out quite that simply, because "You're not going to watch X2, pick up the video game, play it all the way through and then watch X-Men: The Last Stand. It's not going to work as perfectly as that."

What do you think of such storytelling methods? Is it a good idea to put important plot points into a video game format, or does it hurt the big portion of the audience who won't play the game? Is the best idea is to create "filler" story which fits into the universe but is entirely peripheral to the storyline of the films?