Eric Bana on his new mystery “The Dry” and why he doesn’t plan to reprise his role as the Hulk.
Eric Bana gets to do something he rarely has an opportunity to do on screen in his new thriller “The Dry:” Speak in his normal accent. Over the course of his career, the Australian actor has played angry green monsters (“The Incredible Hulk”), monarchs (“The Other Boleyn Girl”), aliens (“Star Trek”) and noble warriors (“Troy”), trying on and shedding American, British and other dialects in the process. But Bana says it was positively liberating to speak in his natural tones as the guilt-stricken Federal Agent Aaron Falk. “The Dry” follows Falk as he returns to his hometown to investigate the death of his childhood friend Luke, who allegedly murdered his wife and son before shooting himself. It’s a difficult homecoming for Falk, who fled the village for the city after another friend, Ellie, drowned mysteriously, raising suspicions about his involvement in her death. “The Dry” is based on the best-selling novel by Jane Harper and is being released by IFC in theaters and on-demand on Friday. Bana spoke with Variety about his passion for the project, his early days in comedy and why he’s done with the Hulk, multiverses be damned. Why did you want to make “The Dry”? Like many of the projects I’m involved with, it started with my wife handing me a book over my pillow and saying, ‘You should read this.’ I read the book and loved it. And then some time later my dear friend, Robert Connolly, we share an office and he came in one day and said he was considering doing an adaptation of ‘The Dry.’ And I just jumped and said, ‘I just read the book and I love it. Shall we do it together?’ So I basically cast myself in the film. The film was shot in the Wimmera Mallee region and unfolds in a rural town, but it’s very different from the outback that we typically see depicted in movies.
