Hulk Hogan Turned Down Role In The Wrestler

Hulk Hogan turned down role in 'The Wrestler'.

The 66-year-old retired professional wrestler - whose real name is Terry Gene Bollea - was reportedly sent a script for the lead role in the 2008 sporting drama movie by director Darren Aronofsky, but the star rejected the offer.

Eric Bischoff, the former President of World Championship Wrestling (WCW), confirmed: ''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.''

The movie role eventually went to Mickey Rourke, who bagged a Best Actor nomination at the Academy Awards for his performance.

And Eric believes Hulk turned down the role because he could ''get the clear picture'' of the movie in his head just from reading the script.

He said: ''Unless you're kind of experienced in it, and you're used to it, and your 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 visualise things.''

Eric also says Hulk didn't want to play a ''broken down, old, beat up wrestler'' in the movie, as he was ''trying to run away'' from his own life at the time.

Speaking on the '83 Weeks' podcast, he added: ''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.''