Jeremy Renner says a salary dispute is part of the reason that Hawkeye has yet to get a second season.
“They asked me to do season 2, and they offered me half the money,” the Avengers alum claimed during a new interview with High Performance. “I’m like, ‘Wow, it’s going to take me twice the amount of work for half the amount of money? So, eight months of my time, essentially, to do it for half the amount?”
Renner indicated that the alleged offer came in after his near-fatal accident, in which the actor was crushed by his snow plow on New Year’s Day 2023 while trying to divert the vehicle away from his nephew. The MCU actor was airlifted to a hospital after the accident, where the medical staff determined he had suffered blunt chest trauma and orthopedic injuries. He was discharged after two weeks and revealed on social media that he broke more than 30 bones and had a collapsed lung.
“I’m like, ‘I’m sorry? Why? Do you think I’m only half the Jeremy because I got ran over? Maybe that’s why you want to pay me half of what I made on the first season,'” Renner said of his reaction. “This is not Marvel, mind you. This is like, just Disney— not even really Disney. It’s just the penny pinchers, the accountants.”
Renner said he declined the “insult offer,” but is still interested in returning to the series to reprise his role as Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye.
“I told them to go fly a kite,” he said. “So we didn’t see eye to eye on it. Sadly, I still love the character. I’d still love to do it, but I had to defend myself. I didn’t ask for any more money, mind you. Just pay me what I made [in] the first season. So it’s all disheartening that that didn’t happen, but that’s fine.”
He added, “I’m happy to let that go because my body is probably thanking me, time and time again, that I’m not doing it right now. But we’ll see.”
A Disney insider disputed Renner’s claims but declined to get into specifics.
Hawkeye debuted in December 2021, picking up on the adventures of Clint Barton after the events of Avengers: Endgame. The six episode series followed Clint in the days before Christmas, Hailee Steinfeld as his arrow-slinging protégé Kate Bishop and also featuring appearances from Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova and Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk.
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While chatting with Entertainment Weekly earlier this year, Marvel Head of Television Brad Winderbaum said the studio has been “looking for opportunities” to revisit Hawkeye, noting that it has plenty of potential for a second season “because it’s Christmas, because it’s Clint and Kate.”
Watch Renner’s full comments above.
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