Incredible Hulk Returns (1988)

Six years after the conclusion of the television series , Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno returns with a made for television movie. The film brings fans of the original series up to speed with David Banner after the series concluded. It deposits the idea that David has managed to keep the Hulk without incident for the past two years.  In that time reporter Jack McGee's newspaper has given up following the story as all leads have finally dried up. David Bannon the name he has gone by for over a year,  has helped build a new device in the field of study with gamma radiation; as an anonymous  research developer.  While in the final stages of using the device to cure him of his condition a former student Donald Blake recognizes him and brings his own set of problems in the form of a Norse Viking named Thor on the same night David stages his experimental cure.

The movie blends a light hearted fare of action and suspense as this marks the first time the series and of Marvel films (not yet rebranded Marvel Studios), to have a teaming up of characters on the screen.  Donald Blake was the character to whom for a period inhabited the power of Thor as means for Odin to teach Thor humility in the comics.  The premise remains true here, Blake is not a doctor but an archeologist and discovers the hammer while on expedition. That discovery made him become fated to be an emissary for Thor so he may one day be worthy to enter the gates of Valhalla, as he was been deemed unworthy.

The movie was pitched to NBC as a backdoor pilot for Thor;  Sadly it did not get picked up as it had received mediocre reviews. The movie was co-directed and written by Nicholas Corea; to whom Bill Bixby had brought on board, for his long standing work with the original series, and kept the lonely man theme song to end in its traditional closing credits.