The small-screen reboot of The Incredible Hulk that was first announced last month now has a creative team: David Eick—whose past ’70s reboot efforts represent both the pinnacle (Battlestar Galactica) and nadir (Bionic Woman)—will team up with whatever hand Guillermo Del Toro isn’t using this month to develop the series for ABC and Marvel TV, with Del Toro executive producing and possibly directing the pilot as his first television project. He’ll also oversee the design of the character, which is said to draw from both comic-book versions and the original TV series with “a few wild tweaks”—and, promisingly, combining puppetry and prosthetics with the usual CGI.
Of course, even a properly lumpy and tactile Hulk from the guy behind Hellboy has to be backed with a good script to justify undertaking the whole endeavor all over again, and while del Toro and Eick promise they’re “retelling the Banner/Hulk story in a fresh way,” all we really know at this point is that it will likely once again focus on his origins, and pick up where “physicist Bruce Banner… will be in his mid-twenties, less reactive and more energized as the world is still his oyster.” So maybe he'll finally have some fun with that whole "inability to form any meaningful human bonds" thing. Look for the show to launch in fall 2012 (just after The Avengers) and, let’s face it, for Del Toro to pull out early next year.