With the release of Black Widow earlier this year, Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton was left as the last of the original Avengers not to star in his own solo movie.
However, he’s also the first of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to take centre stage in his very own Disney+ TV series, and coinciding with the show’s premiere this week, executive producer Trinh Tran has explained why Marvel opted to go down the small screen route with Hawkeye.
“We decided to move Hawkeye from the feature side over to the Disney+ side for [creative flexibility],” said Tran in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “The big question was, ‘How are we going to fit all of this into a two-hour timeframe? We have an Avenger whose backstory we haven’t quite had time to explore yet. We also have to introduce a new character [Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop], as well as allow enough time for them to bond and create that special dynamic that everybody finds so appealing in the comics.’”
SEE ALSO: Read our review of Hawkeye’s two-episode premiere here
“So, in moving it over, it allowed us six hours, three times as much time, which really gave us the creative flexibility we needed to tell the story,” Tran continued. “But challenges come with it as well. We have a process at Marvel and we try to maintain that same process both on the feature side and the TV series side. We treat it as one process that works well for us. But things happen faster on the TV end. We have the same amount of time that we normally do on the feature end, but we have three times as much content that we have to deliver in a shorter time span.”
What do you make of the decision to Disney+ Hawkeye? Would you have liked to see him carry his own movie? Let us know your thoughts on our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
Former Avenger Clint Barton has a seemingly simple mission: get back to his family for Christmas. Possible? Maybe with the help of Kate Bishop, a 22-year-old archer with dreams of becoming a Super Hero. The two are forced to work together when a presence from Barton’s past threatens to derail far more than the festive spirit.
Hawkeye sees Jeremy Renner returning as Clint Barton alongside Hailee Steinfeld (Bumblebee) as Kate Bishop, Florence Pugh (Black Widow) as Yelena Belova, Vera Farmiga (The Conjuring) as Eleanor Bishop, Fra Fee (Les Miserables) as Kazi, Tony Dalton (Better Call Saul) as Jack Duquesne, Zahn McClarnon (Fargo) as William Lopez and newcomer Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez.
Hawkeye airs on Wednesdays on Disney+.