‘Hawkeye’ producer explains why it had to be a TV series and not a movie

Once upon a time, Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton was set to be the subject of his own solo movie, as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s expansion began to spread its wings and focus on characters who arguably don’t rank among the franchise’s top tier.

However, once Disney decided to launch an in-house streaming service that would rely largely on the established properties already at the company’s disposal, Hawkeye became one of the first exclusives to enter development. The project was first announced in late 2018, with the first two episodes of the series finally premiering this coming Wednesday.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, producer Trinh Tran explains why Hawkeye was moved away from the big screen and onto Disney Plus once Marvel firmed up plans to develop an extensive slate of episodic adventures.

“We decided to move Hawkeye from the feature side over to the Disney+ side for that very reason. 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, as well as allow enough time for them to bond and create that special dynamic that everybody finds so appealing in the comics.” 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.

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.”

Avengers: Age of Ultron was our first real glimpse into Clint’s life away from saving the world, and trying to cram that much exposition and character-building into the space of two hours would have definitely been a struggle, one that could have ultimately affected the quality of the final product. A TV show is a more than suitable compromise, though, and fans can’t wait to clap eyes on Hawkeye at long last just four days from now.