Mark Ruffalo for Hulk is Semi-Official?

Our good friend Jimmy Martin, film critic for SLUG magazine, opted not to go see Scott Pilgrim tonight with me to go to some Comic-Con parties.  He’s been live tweeting his evening (along with Androidika) and he dropped this little gem on us about 10 minutes ago:

Told by Joss Whedon that my bet for Mark Ruffalo as The Hulk shouldn’t be changed! It’s semi-official!

This tells you two things.  One, you should be following @slugfilmcritic on Twitter, but it also means quite a bit for the Marvel universe.  There’s been plenty of talk about Ed Norton’s interest in reprising a role he did really well in, but what could have been the considerations made against him that is putting Mark Ruffalo in the lead?

I’m not going to argue with the casting, I think it’s great.  I watched Mark Ruffalo again recently in Shutter Island and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the guy certainly has the chops to play with the big boys…  But so does Ed Norton, and he also has a continuity with this series, right down to having Tony Stark guest-cameo in his movie.

What do you guys think?