Hulking Up

Image credit: Jennifer Connelly: Sara de Boer/Retna

GREEN-EYED GIRL Connelly has a Banner day with ''Hulk''

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Our excitement that production on ''The Hulk'' has finally begun ain't nothing compared to the happiness of producer Gale Ann Hurd, who has been attached to the project for more than a decade. ''It's always been alive and kicking,'' says Hurd, ''but we opened the floodgates about a year and a half ago,'' when director Ang Lee (''Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'') signed on. (Explains Hurd of her rather artistic choice, which she made before she had seen ''Crouching Tiger,'' ''You want to make this film a character-driven film with amazing action.'')

Starring Eric Bana (''Black Hawk Down'') as the mercurial Bruce Banner and costarring Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly, ''Hulk'' will actually benefit from its long time in development, since the less-than-jolly green giant will be entirely CGI. Says Hurd, ''If we started a few years ago, I don't think the technology would have been up to it.''

Hurd's company, Valhalla Entertainment, is developing another project that will star a CGI character, this time an adolescent pop star named t-babe, as well as a movie purely for humans: a Boston Strangler film that Carl Franklin hopes to direct after he completes ''Out of Time,'' starring Denzel Washington.