Unless something goes horrendously awry, The Incredible Hulk will always be the lowest-grossing entry in Marvel Cinematic Universe, making it quite fortunate the blockbuster set that benchmark just six weeks after the franchise launched with Iron Man in the summer of 2008.
It was also the superhero saga’s worst-reviewed feature until Thor: The Dark World came along six years later, and it’s still ranked fourth from bottom in the wake of Eternals and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, hardly a stellar reputation. Then again, director Louis Leterrier is isn’t exactly famed for his consistency looking at a filmography that largely revolves around vapid effects-heavy actioners.
As it turns out, he almost had the keys to the entire Phase One kingdom, after revealing to Josh Horowitz that Iron Man was the one he wanted most of all, noting that when he was offered his pick of the Marvel bunch, directing Tony Stark was “what I wanna do.”
Not only that, but he was circling a multitude of other MCU titles as well, and the prospect of Leterrier directing any of them could have drastically changed the course of the entire shared mythology.
“I passed on Thor, I was like, ‘I honestly don’t know how to do that,’ and Guardians. Avengers, obviously, yes, I told him about [my interest] in Avengers, but I don’t think i made it to the list, but I met on Guardians and [Feige] actually asked me if i was interested in Thor.”
Leterrier is hardly a terrible director, although he’s far from being a remarkable one either, but his career has seen more hits than misses in fairness. That being said, having him at the reins of one MCU epic has proven to be more than enough.
