Jeremy Renner‘s first film following several drug and domestic abuse allegations from his ex-wife, Sonni Pacheco, has gotten off to a horrendous start. So far, Arctic Dogs, an animated feature that follows an arctic fox who wants to get promoted at his mail delivery job, has pulled in a measly $3.1 million.
Honestly, that doesn’t sound like the most appealing concept to begin with; but it was enough to reel in several all-star voice actors including Alec Baldwin, John Cleese, James Franco and Heidi Klum, among others. Distributed by the incredibly inconsistent media company Entertainment Studios (who made the horrendous Hurricane Heist on one hand, and one of 2017’s best films, Hostiles, on the other), the movie could have been a Halloween treat, but ended up being a trick for just about everyone involved.
According to a report from The Numbers, Arctic Dogs grossed only $700,000 on its opening night. Things admittedly got better as the weekend progressed, but having been made on a $50 million budget, it’s surely been a disappointment. And the critical response hasn’t been much better. At the time of writing, the film has an awful score of 28 on Metacritic and is currently sitting at a 14% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Again, not too much about this film sounded promising to begin with, so who knows if the recent allegations against Renner played too heavily a part on Arctic Dog‘s performance, or lack thereof? But regardless, the remnants of his custody battle have hardly done his career any favors. In addition to the failure that is Arctic Dogs, we previously reported a since-confirmed story that Disney and Marvel are considering replacing him as the MCU’s Hawkeye.
At this point, we have to wonder: Will they actually get rid of Jeremy Renner? On the one hand, the House of Mouse is very proactive with getting its high-caliber staff members out of the door when something terrible’s come to light (i.e. James Gunn and Johnny Depp). But on the other, this would be the first major shift in casting for an MCU superhero and the company has no idea how the filmgoing public would react to a universe-shattering casting change. For what it’s worth, reports say that they’ve decided against it, but as of yet, the studio hasn’t issued an official comment.
To think, this all could’ve been avoided if it were Hawkeye who sacrificed himself for the Soul Stone instead of Black Widow.