We just got back from the Independent Film Gotham Awards where Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker won awards for Best Ensemble Performance and for Best Feature, putting it well into the running for Best Picture at the Oscars. It was a wild and crazy night, but we couldn’t leave without getting a few moments in with one of the film’s stars, Jeremy Renner, who was all over the internet this weekend when Empire magazine broke the news that he has had talks about possibly playing the role of Hawkeye in Marvel Studios’ The Avengers movie.
Anyone who has seen The Hurt Locker knows how great Renner is as a hotshot bomb expert in Iraq, exemplifying the perfect attitude to bring to the Avengers’ hotshot archery expert Hawkeye. The first thing we wanted to know was whether there’d been any more news since doing that interview with Empire. “I haven’t heard anything since I talked to them three weeks ago,” he admitted. “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.”
We told him how excited SuperHeroHype readers–at least the ones who’ve seen The Hurt Locker–were about his possible casting in the role, and how hopefully those who haven’t seen the movie will try and check it out. “They sold me on the idea, too, because I love the idea that Hawkeye’s really not a superhero,” Jeremy told us. “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.”
When we asked him if he’s started reading up on his Hawkeye comic book history just in case he gets the role, he gave us a possible hint of what the character might look like in the movie compared to the comics: “Yeah, but 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.”
So while some people keep busy rooting for Jeremy’s Oscar chances, let’s all of us here at SuperHeroHype keep rooting for his Hawkeye chances!
Look for a lot more interviews from the Gothams over on ComingSoon.net later this week.
Source: Edward Douglas
