Jeremy Renner joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the 2011 feature film Thor. Since then he has been a part of numerous other projects in the franchise until his last appearance in the Disney+ show Hawkeye. After Avengers: Endgame, a lot of the original Avengers said farewell to the MCU.
For Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans, it was their last movie in the franchise, and Scarlett Johansson left soon after Black Widow in 2020. That left Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo and Jeremy Renner still a part of the franchise. Ruffalo came back with She-Hulk and Hemsworth did Love and Thunder. As for Renner, he joined Hailee Steinfeld for Hawkeye, which is one of the better projects from the vast selection of shows that Disney released after the end of Phase 3.
Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye Was Supposed to be a Movie
Out of the six original Avengers, five of them have already had their solo movies, multiple in some cases. It is only Hawkeye who hadn’t had a solo feature of his own. But as was revealed later, when the Hawkeye project was initially being made, it was supposed to be a movie. The story was similar to what we got in the Disney+ show, but the creative heads decided that a 2-hour long movie would not be enough you tell the story they wanted to.
Trinh Tran, executive producer of Hawkeye revealed (via Den of Geek):
When we first started talking about it and developing Hawkeye, it was supposed to be a feature… The early discussion was, what is the story of Clint Barton and Kate Bishop on the feature side? Then as we were sort of diving into the research and going through all the comics, there was a lot of great stuff that we absolutely love, so we were trying to figure out, how do we have enough time to tell Clint’s story?
But with so much material to cover, Kevin Feige and the rest of the creative heads decided to go with a TV show format, so they have more time to properly depict all that they wanted from the story. Tran further explained:
It didn’t make sense that the two-hour timeframe was the right way to go. So at that time, Disney+ was also launching and we were talking about characters going into that platform. In speaking with Kevin, he mentioned, ‘Well, why not just allow you guys the six hours of space so that you can get deeper into the characters of these two and form that dynamic and chemistry?’ So it made sense to move that over.
And well, instead of the initial 2, we got a 6-hour long multiple-episode format for Hawkeye. With both Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton and Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop, the show gained pretty positive reviews from critics as well as fans. The show has an average rating of 92% on Tomatometer and an average audience score of 88%.
Jeremy Renner Was The Reason Behind a Hawkeye-Based Project
While it took him a while, Jeremy Renner became a sensation in Hollywood soon after he had become a part of the industry. And when Marvel asked if he was interested in a solo project, he was ready to lead a new project with an almost-new cast to boot. During a press meet for Hawkeye, Kevin Feige said:
Primarily it’s Jeremy Renner. We want to see more Jeremy Renner…that goes back to the earliest days and the trust that Jeremy had to jump into the MCU before moderators said things like, ‘Welcome to the MCU.’ It was, ‘Hey, you want to do this thing with us? It’d be pretty cool, and it could be neat.’ He said yes, then he won an Academy Award, and he still said yes.
While the movies so far had only shown bits and pieces of Clint Barton and what made him Hawkeye, the show gave us an in-depth visual of the whole picture. Rumor has it that the show might get another season, but nothing is concrete yet.
Hawkeye is available for streaming on Disney+.
