UPDATE: Trusted industry insider Daniel Richtman has just Tweeted about this as well, seemingly confirming our scoop.
ORIGINAL STORY: Despite playing one of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in the MCU, it seems that Jeremy Renner may not be as pure in real life, as earlier this week we learned that the Hawkeye actor’s substance abuse issues have been causing a lot of problems in his personal life. His ex-wife, Sonni Pacheco, has filed a motion for sole custody of their daughter, with the reason being that Renner regularly abuses cocaine and alcohol.
Allegedly, this has led to some erratic behavior on his part, including threatening to kill Pacheco and also shooting a gun into the ceiling of their house, which came after he apparently put the gun in his own mouth and threatened to pull the trigger. A nanny for the family has also said that she overheard Renner talking about planning to kill himself and his ex-wife.
If true, this all paints a pretty shocking and sad home life for one of Hollywood’s biggest names and you have to wonder what kind of ramifications it’ll have for his career now that it’s out there. While Renner has already denied the claims, many people have begun to turn their back on him and what’s more, we’re hearing that Marvel/Disney is considering recasting Hawkeye, as the Mouse House doesn’t want their family friendly image tainted with this troubling news.
Now, before we dive into this, let’s just make one thing perfectly clear: no decisions have been made yet. Jeremy Renner could very well show up as Clint Barton again in the MCU and go on to play him for the foreseeable future. Right now, it’s just something that’s been brought up/discussed internally within the studio and they’re only “considering it,” according to what we’ve been told. And know that this intel comes to us from multiple sources who’ve proven themselves in the past by giving us numerous scoops that turned out to be right, such as the Inhumans will be rebooted in Ms. Marvel, Taskmaster will be the villain in Black Widow, Wiccan will debut in WandaVision, a Young Avengers TV show is in the works for Disney Plus and a Nova movie is in active development.
We Got This Covered was the first outlet to tell you about all of those and they’ve all either been outright confirmed in the time since we reported on them or corroborated by numerous other outlets. Which is to say that though this news about Renner may shock a lot of people, we’ve got no reason to doubt it. After all, one look on Twitter will show you that some fans have already turned on him and want the actor gone from the MCU.
But will Marvel/Disney actually recast Hawkeye at this stage? It’s tough to say, as it’s not like the hero has much of a future in the franchise anyways. From what we’ve been told, after the upcoming Disney Plus series, his time in the MCU will more or less be done as he’ll have passed the mantle onto Kate Bishop.
Still, Clint Barton is needed for the aforementioned TV series and it’ll be interesting to see if the studio turns their back on Renner and brings someone else in to fill the role or if they choose to overlook these troubling allegations that currently surround him.