There will be the odd person here and there that may disagree, but generally speaking most people seemed to think that this summer’s “The Incredible Hulk” was a step up from the previous incarnation given to us by Ang Lee. One of the reasons was obviously the different take on Doctor Bruce Banner that Edward Norton brought to the project (not to mention re-writting the script).

However, if you’re hoping that Norton will return as The Hulk for the upcoming Avengers movie, or that perhaps he’ll turn green again for a possible Hulk sequel… don’t hold your breath. Things aren’t looking too good on that front for several reasons:

1) The movie, while liked by audiences, was not nearly the box office success the studio was hoping for, especially coming off the massive success of Iron Man

2) There was a well publicized spat between Norton and studio execs over the project leading up to the release of the film which Norton did little to no promotion of.

3) Despite re-writting the script, Norton was stripped of the writing credit

4) Norton himself now doesn’t sound all that optimistic about it. The good folks over at ComingSoon give us this:

The Incredible Hulk star Edward Norton tells MTV he is uncertain about the green fella’s future. “The minds of Marvel are sometimes opaque,” Norton said. “I won’t say [they’re] obtuse, but I don’t have any idea what they want to do.” “They’ve got this notion of collecting the Marvel characters,” Norton said. “Who knows where they’ll go?”

I’m not going to say “case closed” at this point, but things certainly don’t look promising for Norton to return. The question now is, who do they get to fill his shoes for The Avengers if Norton doesn’t come back? This may sound a bit far fetched… but how about getting Eric Bana to return? Even people who didn’t like the first Hulk movie still generally seems to agree he was pretty good in it. Just a thought.