Abstract
In an era when the institutional agenda of contemporary Hollywood cinema is increasingly dependent on policies of textual recycling (sequels, remakes, adaptations), it is nonetheless noticeable that one means of injecting big-budget productions with a sense of novelty or 'cult' cachet is the assignment of an auteur director from a non-studio background. The 'values' circulating around concepts both of the auteur and of the blockbuster event movie are challenged in this encounter, especially as notions of mass taste vs. independent or art house sensibilities come into play. This paper will use a case study of Ang Lee's comic-book adaptation The Hulk (2003) to explore how such productions expose the category of the auteur to the commercial logic of the blockbuster. By juxtaposing 'official' (promotional, critical) and 'unofficial' discourses (such as fan writing), recent modifications to the notion of authorship in popular cinema will be assessed.