'Hurt Locker' Star Renner Says He's Not Hawkeye

Although I have no real problem with the idea of Jeremy Renner playing Hawkeye in another of he endless Marvel Comics adaptations, the Hurt Locker star and possible Best Actor nominee says there's nothing to the rumor that launched about a month ago. At the time, Renner admitted he'd been sent the script to Thor, in which Hawkeye is set to be introduced prior to a larger role in The Avengers. "Hawkeye could be interesting," Renner said in November. "I think they're pretty awesome, trying to make superhero movies almost plausible and not just some fantasy thing." Now, however, the actor says it was just an exploratory part of the process and that he's not going to be playing the character at all. Telling Movieline that his friendship with Avengers writer Zak Penn gave him an early look at what would be planned for the character, Renner explains, "The only reason it came out this early - because Avengers is two years away - is that they're thinking 'OK, we may throw him in Thor, we may not, as a cameo'. You know what I mean?" "So there's truth that we talked about it, but there's no truth to me doing it," Renner insists. What this doesn't tell us is where Marvel and Renner go from here. Some of our regular readers have dropped his name on the Captain America wishlist, and that makes a fair amount of sense. I would like to see him get a bigger professional reward than Hawkeye, who's a great character but I don't think he has a long life on his own in the movies. Obviously, Captain America would be a bigger feather in his cap. But that's still a while away. The other question is who does become Hawkeye now? Thor shoots this spring, and even though it will only be a small role in this movie, Hawkeye would be a bigger factor in Avengers.