Jeremy Renner raised a few eyebrows this week when he used the Coronavirus pandemic as the basis for an application to cut his child support payments by a third. His argument is that the impact on the movie industry will substantially decrease his earnings in 2020, which are already lower due to the fact that he isn’t appearing in an MCU film (aside from perhaps a cameo in Black Widow).
His next major MCU project is the Disney+ show Hawkeye, which we heard in early February was due to shoot in September 2020 with a Fall 2021 release. But the future of the show may now be in doubt, as Renner’s legal argument for cutting his child support payments states:
“It is likely that most productions will not resume again prior to the end of the year. As such, the projects that I had previously lined up to film this year are likely canceled or postponed.”
Hawkeye falls under this umbrella, and while every Marvel Studios film and TV production will see delays due to Coronavirus, this one should have been relatively insulated from it. The show is currently in pre-production and even the most pessimistic predictions for the pandemic indicate a return to a semblance of normality before late summer.
But with everything being bumped back in the calendar – including Disney+ stablemates like Loki and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier – it appears that Hawkeye will see further delays. And that coupled with the not-great publicity Renner has been receiving over the last year may mean that Disney has quietly decided to pull the plug on the show altogether.
Whatever the case, the February report indicated that Marvel Studios were looking at a year from the beginning of Hawkeye‘s shoot to its first episode. If the show has been pushed back to a 2021 shoot though, that means we may not see it for another two years. And by that point, will anyone still care about the character?
