The battle this spring between hands-on artiste Ed Norton and the Marvel Studio brass over the relaunch of the Hulk franchise has proven to be one of the most acrimonious displays of "creative differences" that we have seen in some time. The notoriously "passionate" (read: difficult) actor has been accused of "posturing" over how the final cut of the movie he famously claimed to have re-written played out, which led to a brisk retort written by Norton and emailed to, of all places, the actor-friendly confines of Entertainment Weekly. And although accuracy-challenged scribe Roger Friedman reports that Ed Norton "slipped off to a desert island rather than do publicity for the movie he stars in and nominally wrote," the cantankerous diva appeared in a Hulk promotional parody skit that aired on last night's Jimmy Kimmel Show. And while Norton brought the funny, he didn't resist the urge to get in a potshot at action-averse auteur Ang Lee.

Defamer HQ opens for business this morning with an apology to newly non-difficult Edward Norton, whose squabbles with Marvel and Universal over The Incredible Hulk appear to have been blown out of proportion by a naturally overzealous press. Via Entertainment Weekly, Norton himself went public for the first time this week to shout "Piffle!" at the accounts of acrimony dug up by Nikki Finke and The New York Times (and dutifully passed on by us); lest we risk decontextualization of any of his precious 257 words, we now pass along his full statement and more of our own profuse contrition after the jump:

Try as it might, Universal is facing another orgy of resistance to its big-screen efforts on behalf of the Incredible Hulk comic franchise. This time around, five years after Ang Lee's expensive, cheesy The Hulk flatlined into muscly green oblivion, The Incredible Hulk has studio flacks spinning, onlookers shrugging and temperamental star Edward Norton naturally pouting over the whole drama. Reports NY Timesman Brooks Barnes: