Jeremy Renner Confirms What Marvel’s Hawkeye Series Takes From Comics

Hawkeye star Jeremy Renner confirmed that the Disney+ series takes cues from the comics. A lot has been made of the influence Matt Fraction and David Aja’s run with Clint Barton had on this show. Renner himself explained how the Hawkeye comics come into play on Jimmy Kimmel Live this week. The Avenger said, “We use the comics a lot as a basis for the look and format of the show.” It would be hard to look at the promotional poster for this project and not come away with the impression that Hawkeye was a direct adaptation of the Fraction and Aja run. There are going to be some differences, there always are in the MCU, but the bones were there. (And to be frank, the comics are worth reading on their own, so go check them out on Marvel Unlimited or go buy them!) It’s nice to get the confirmation in such an honest way heading into a giant event for a lot of Marvel Studios fans. 

A recent interview with SFX Magazine saw Hailee Steinfeld getting ready for her MCU debut. In a wild moment, she compared catching up on the Marvel Comics to reading Emily Dickinson’s work for her Apple TV+ series Dickinson. It turns out, the source material is kind of crucial for both projects.

“As far as the comics go, yes,” Seinfeld said when addressing cramming for her Marvel series. “Again, it’s kind of like Emily and her poetry: having this world of endless information. I’ve always loved comics. I’ve always been a very visual person, and a large book with anything over 200-250 pages has always intimidated me, so comics have always been something I’ve been drawn to because of the visual aspect of it. So I’ve had so much fun reading these comics, and going through them and discovering these elements of Kate Bishop that are in there that we’re bringing to life in the show, and other elements of the comics.”

In another conversation with Trinh Tran, MCU producer, Comicbook.com got an idea of how the studio views these shows. Adaptation occurs, but these are built to be like feature films with a similar level of production value.

“We’re treating our shows as if we’re making our features,” Tran said. “I mean, the feel and the quality of those TV shows are going to be like the Marvel movies that you’ve seen. So that’s always been [Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige]’s mindset of let’s make sure that when people are going to be watching these episodes, it’s going to feel like it’s just one long movie except rather than two-and-a-half hours, it’s going to be much longer. And the idea behind certain characters getting their shows is because we’ll have a lot more time to be able to develop these characters rather than the shorter.”

Hawkeye debuts on Disney+ on November 24th.

How excited are you to see Hawkeye? Let us know down in the comments!