During a recent episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff revealed that Hulk Hogan turned down the chance to play the lead in The Wrestler, and why he thinks he chose to do so. Here’s what he had to say:
He had the opportunity. I met with Darren [Aronofsky]. Darren wanted to meet with me in New York about being in the movie as well, so it’s not like, there were a lot of people, Ernest “The Cat” Miller was in the movie, for crying out loud. So Darren reached out to a lot of people in the industry. Early on, did reach out to Hulk.
I think there were actually two scripts, I could be wrong about this, I’m really just flying off from the hip from 10 years ago. I think there were originally two scripts. Not sure where Darren came in, he might have come in on the first one, I don’t really remember. I do remember that, yeah, they did reach out, they sent Hulk a script.
Unless you’re kind of experienced in it, and you’re used to it, and you’re brain processes a script, a movie script, in a certain way, for people who are unaccustomed to looking at a movie script and have only looked at television formats, you don’t really get the clear picture in your head. You can’t see the scenes the way the writer is really trying to communicate them, because you’re not used to that format. There’s interior, exterior, pan here, I mean, there is a lot of direction within the context of a script that if you’re not used to seeing it, it just distracts you and therefore takes you out of the moment in terms of trying to visualize things.
So I think Terry probably looked at that script and went, ‘Eh, I am a broken down old, beat up wrestler, I don’t want to play one in a movie.’ He was trying to run away from the reality, not embrace it at that point. So yeah, he did pass on it.
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Credit: 83 Weeks. H/T 411Mania.