Marvel's Incredible Hulk Series Used Footage From An Obscure Steven Spielberg TV Movie

Long before pumping out TV shows for streaming, Marvel dived into the realm of live-action television with 1978's "The Incredible Hulk," starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno. While a product of a simpler time, its ambition and focus on the human drama made it a hit with audiences of all ages, and was even homaged in later Marvel series. The series was produced by Universal and CBS at a time when there was no Marvel Studios and instead, Marvel Comics were selling film and TV rights to many of its characters, the Hulk included.

Universal played an important part in making it as impressive as possible. This was partially thanks to the studio's extensive film library, which was used as stock footage by series creator Kenneth Johnson to bring a cinematic scale to "The Incredible Hulk." One of the films the studio owned was Steven Spielberg's directorial debut "Duel," which centered on a road rage-induced showdown between a traveling salesman and an unseen trucker.

Footage from "Duel" featured in Season 1, Episode 7 of "The Incredible Hulk," "Never Give a Trucker an Even Break." The episode followed a group of hijackers who steal a semi-truck.

Even prior to "The Incredible Hulk," Kenneth Johnson had experience using Universal-owned stock footage on shows such as "Six Billion Dollar Man" and its oft-forgot Emmy-winning spin-off "Bionic Woman." Speaking to Cinema Retro, Johnson shared, "Well, we were always under the gun to make the episodes as cheap as we could and yet make them look as big as we could. And what I discovered early on doing the bionic shows was that anything that was in the Universal film library, we had access to as long as we didn't use any actor's faces."

Johnson was well acquainted with "Duel's" source material prior to Spielberg getting his hands on it, which led to its use in "The Incredible Hulk." Johnson continued, "And with 'Never Give a Trucker an Even Break,' I had 'Duel' in the back of my head partly because, before I got connected anywhere ... I read a magazine story one night by Richard Matheson ... So, I called Steven Bochco and told him, 'This could be a great TV movie.'"

The rights to "Duel" ended up going to producer George Eckstein, who handed the movie to Steven Spielberg to direct. While some might see his use of "Duel" footage as a form of payback for not being able to work on it, Johnson clarified that the decision was more out of convenience than anything, stating, "It was just footage I could use because it was just sitting there collecting dust."