Jeremy Renner to Play Hawkeye?

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and here's one more thing we can be potentially thankful for. Jeremy Renner is rumored to be playing Hawkeye in some upcoming Marvel films, presumably appearing in cameo roles in Thor and Captain America before moving on to a major role in The Avengers.

Renner was the best part of this year's The Hurt Locker, and if this casting announcement proves true we all should stop what we're doing and give Marvel Studios a standing ovation. The casting directors for that studio have been knocking it out of the park lately (Ed Norton was a great Bruce Banner, even if Letterier's The Incredible Hulk wasn't the best of the bunch), and casting Renner even in a minor role would be another step in the right direction for the company. The potential Oscar-nominee definitely sounds intrigued by the project:

Hawkeye could be interesting. They're going to send me some stuff on it, see what it is. But I think they're pretty awesome, trying to make superhero movies almost plausible and not some fantasy thing.

Collider points out that if The Avengers succeeds, that film would be a great platform for Hawkeye to show his skills and possibly earn a spinoff film, which almost certainly wouldn't be possible for such a minor character without some sort of introduction first.

Never heard of Hawkeye? A man named Clint Barton, orphaned as a child, who was raised in the circus and trained as an archer and acrobat. After discovering his mentors were criminals, Barton created the persona of Hawkeye and went on to fight crime as a vigilante, eventually breaking into The Avengers Mansion and gaining membership into the superhero group.

[Source: Empire UK, transcribed by The Playlist, via Slashfilm]