Original Hulk Star Would “Absolutely” Return to Marvel

Original Hulk movie star Jennifer Connelly is ready to get into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Connelly played Betty Ross, the love interest of Eric Bana’s Hulk/Bruce Banner in Oscar-winning director Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk movie. Hulk has gone down as one of the worst comic book adaptation attempts of the 2000s era, so it’s not surprising that the film’s top-tier cast – Connelly, Bana, Nick Nolte, Sam Elliott, Josh Lucas – has largely stayed away from major comic book movie franchise afterward. 

However, in a new interview for Dark Matter (Apple TV’s new sci-fi-drama-thriller series), Jennifer Connelly and her co-star Joel Edgerton (The Thing 2011) talked about working with Marvel Studios. While Edgerton had a failed audition to play Star-Lord in James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Connelly has watch the MCU unfold from a much different perspective: adoring wife. 

“I think that they [Marvel] make great films and my husband [Paul Bettany, who plays Vision in the MCU] has had such a fantastic time working with all of them, and they have such a great group of actors working with them,” Connelly said. “I would absolutely do it.”

Jennifer Connelly has had one of the more impressive careers in Hollywood, with her string of famous film roles going all the way back to the 1980s with Once Upon a Time in America and Labyrinth. Connelly (54) has spent most of the last decade being way more selective in her choice of roles. Her biggest film was playing Tom Cruise’s love interest in the billion-dollar hit Top Gun: Maverick, while she also broke into television with a villain role in the TV reboot of Snowpeiercer, which will air Season 4 this year. 

Ironically enough, Jennifer Connelly already has a role in the MCU – though clearly she doesn’t consider it as such. Connelly lent her voice to the AI character “Karen” in Sony and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Homecoming; Karen was the voice assistant that Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) installed inside Peter Parker’s (Tom Holland) new Spider-Man suit. It was a small role that didn’t Connelly to appear onscreen, so she’s in the unique position of having her comic book movie street cred spread from Hulk into the MCU, while still having room to be re-introduced as a full-fledged character – or even her original Betty Ross character, crossing over with the MCU from a different reality of the Multiverse. 

Hulk is available to stream on Netflix; Dark Matter can be streamed on Apple TV+. 

Source: THR