Adding to all the recent Marvel Comics news, Jeremy Renner (star of Kathryn Bigelow’s fantastic war drama The Hurt Locker) has revealed in an article with Empire magazine that he has recently been in talks with Marvel about portraying the character Hawkeye in the proposed Avengers movie and also making a cameo appearance in their upcoming production of Thor. Renner told Empire:
“Hawkeye could be interesting. They’re going to send me some stuff on it, see what it is. But I think they’re pretty awesome, trying to make superhero movies almost plausible and not just some fantasy thing.”
Since then Renner spoke further about the character during an impromptu interview with SuperHeroHype at the Independent Film Gotham Awards (where The Hurt Locker won awards for Best Feature and Best Ensemble Cast Performance, and Renner himself was nominated for Best Breakthrough Actor). He stated:
“I haven’t heard anything since I talked to them three weeks ago. The last I knew is that they still have to find their director for ‘The Avengers,’ that’s where he’s really going to show up. They were just talking, ‘Like maybe we should consider maybe hiring Hawkeye now’ but there’s no director on ‘Avengers’ so they don’t really want to force-feed the director, ‘Here’s the whole cast.’ It’s a big role so they didn’t want to do that to the director, so I think they might wait. I know they’re interested, I’m interested, so we’ll see if it works out.”
Anybody who has seen Renner’s amazing performance in The Hurt Locker or even watched him in 28 Weeks Later, and is familiar with Marvel’s Hawkeye, will no doubt be thinking to themselves that he is a perfect fit for the role. Jeremy also told SuperHeroHype why he wants to play Hawkeye and how he might look on the big screen:
“I love the idea that Hawkeye’s really not a superhero. He’s just a man with a high skill set, so I can relate to (that). The Marvel guys are great for how they made Iron Man to be, ‘Oh, that’s actually plausible’ so I bought it and I love that. They’re really, really smart guys and I’d love to work for ’em, and we’ll see if it works out.” Regarding Hawkeye’s costume, he said: “It’s going to be modernized, it’s not going to be the guy with the big purple (mask), it’s not going to be a guy in tights. It’s going to be a guy in sunglasses and a vest. He’s going to be more modernized and I’m gonna say, ‘A cooler-looking version’ and not the big weird costume he had on. I don’t think they’re going that route.”
Sounds to me as though Hawkeye, much like Nick Fury, will appear as the Ultimate Marvel incarnation. Personally I don’t mind which version of Hawkeye appears in these films, I just hope Jeremy Renner gets the part.
Check out some of these different variations of Hawkeye to see what Renner was talking about.
