You’ll like him when he’s angry: Lou Ferrigno is coming to Central New York to film a new monster movie.
Variety reports the 70-year-old actor will star in “The Hermit,” a horror-comedy scheduled to shoot in Syracuse in August. Ferrigno will play a murderous, cannibalistic pig farmer in his first role as a creature since he starred on the superhero TV series “The Incredible Hulk” that aired on CBS from 1977 to 1982.
“Most people are surprised that I’ve never really entered the horror space before now,” Ferrigno told the publication. “When I was a kid I was fascinated with the monsters of the time like Dracula and Frankenstein... The character I am playing is unique and will give an updated twist to those monsters I grew up with.”
The plot centers on two 19-year-olds who go on a fishing trip when they stumble across a farm with animal heads hanging from the wall. They then meet the “giant” that runs the place, a loner who doesn’t speak well because he grew up “kind of feral” with his mother, who taught him how to cook people and make them into jerky.
The film will be directed by U.S.-based Italian filmmaker Salvatore Sclafani, who is also producing along with Gerry Pass’ Chrome Entertainment. Pass told Variety that Ferrigno will be perfect for the role because he’s had hearing loss for most of his life, “so he knows exactly what it feels like to be treated differently by other people. He understands the angst and the anger.”
“And then he likes the cooking people part too,” Pass said of Ferrigno.
Ferrigno first rose to fame as a bodybuilder, competing with Arnold Schwarzenegger for the Mr. Olympia title in 1975, before going on to become an actor. Ferrigno has appeared in more than 100 movies and TV shows, including “Sharknado 3,” “The King of Queens,” “I Love You Man,” “Hercules,” “Chuck,” “The Apprentice” and Marvel’s “The Incredible Hulk.”
The Syracuse Film Office has not said which locations “The Hermit” will be using. Productions that use the Greater Syracuse Soundstage (formerly known as the nano film hub in DeWitt) are eligible for New York state film tax credits, which have made Central New York a popular place for filmmaking.
More than 30 movies have filmed in Syracuse since 2016, including “American Dresser,” “Paper Spiders,” “Gabriel’s Inferno,” “Odd Man Rush,” “Tyson’s Run,” Ron Perlman’s “Pottersville,” Jeff Goldblum’s “The Mountain,” Rebecca Hall’s “The Night House,” Siobhan Fallon Hogan’s “Shelter in Solitude,” Jerrod Carmichael’s “On the Count of Three,” and American High titles like “The Binge,” “Sex Appeal,” “Big Time Adolescence,” “Plan B,” “Crush,” “The Ultimate Playlist of Noise” and “I Love My Dad.”
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