Jeremy Renner appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live and was asked about the upcoming Hawkeye Disney+ series. For an unofficially announced show, he responded the best way he could.
A Disney+ series featuring Hawkeye and Kate Bishop was unofficially announced on Wednesday after news broke from Variety. But the key word to stress here is “unofficially,” because if it isn’t announced by Disney, then it may as well have not been announced at all.
For that reason, whenever it comes to unofficially announced news, the people involved in those projects have to lay low until Disney finally gets the word out itself. Unfortunately for Jeremy Renner, who’ll be starring in the series, he can’t lay low because of the Avengers: Endgame promotion he’s doing. Thus, coincidentally, Renner appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live the same day the news came out.
That made it the perfect opportunity for Kimmel to ask Renner about his thoughts on the series, and Renner tried to respond the best way he could.
In the interview, Kimmel began by asking him about an Instagram poster Renner shared featuring him and Endgame co-star Paul Rudd. Renner explained that since he and Rudd can’t say much about Endgame during the press tour, they’d instead promote a movie that they actually could talk about: a completely made-up movie called 50 Year Old Virgins.
Shortly after, Kimmel asked Jeremy Renner about the Hawkeye series, saying “Variety reported that you were going to be doing a Hawkeye television series on Disney+.”
Renner (probably aware of the infamous Marvel snipers) tried to dodge the question as best as he could, saying, “Well, look at their name. They have a variety of stories, right? So they have lots of different things to say.”
It was a nice save, but Kimmel didn’t let him off the hook that easily. After some back in forth, Kimmel asked him whether his character Clint Barton would be Hawkeye or Ronin in the series. Seemingly caught in a bind, Renner quickly resorted to his safe word, blurting out “50 Year Old Virgins… in theaters now!”
You can see the entire conversation in the clip below.
The fake movie is certainly an interesting way to de-escalate the situation, to say the least, but at least the Renner avoided giving away any spoilers. If things go as predicted for this afternoon, though, Renner won’t have to keep silent long. With Disney’s investors meeting today, some are predicting Disney will reveal more about its upcoming series.
Despite there being news about a Vision and Scarlet Witch series, as well as a Bucky and Falcon series, the only show they have officially announced is the Loki series. If all goes well today, we may have official announcements about the new shows, which means the actors will finally be at liberty to talk about their involvement. (We’re using “at liberty” loosely, since they still won’t be able to talk about the plot and other details.)
You can see Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye in Avengers: Endgame in theaters April 26.