When Anthony and Joe Russo started plotting Captain America: The Winter Soldier, they knew that they wanted to bring a few Avengers along for the ride. Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow ended up being a partner alongside Chris Evans’ heroic warrior. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) fought the good fight. And there have been rumors that Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye was supposed to have a small role, but he ended up on the creative cutting room floor. Today, a rumor circulated that Hawkeye might find his way into Captain America 3 when that movie reaches theaters in May 2016.
But Joe and Anthony Russo told me, personally, not to stop there.
Jeremy Renner got the ball rolling, telling Collider that he’d heard "rumblings" of a beefed-up role in Captain America 3. Seeing as how Joss Whedon’s The Avengers: Age of Ultron hasn’t yet played it cards, it would be early for the Russos to reveal what they had in store. But still, I had them on the phone this afternoon, and asked them which Avengers they would like to have at their disposal for a Black Widow-sized role.
"That’s such a hard question because we’ve kind of already done that," Joe Russo told me, saying they already built characters into their screenplay. "Do they have to be under contract with Marvel? Maybe they are at another studio."
Oh. Intriguing. Wait one second. Could Marvel be pulling some strings behind the scenes to get THIS guy back under the Marvel umbrella?
OK, that’s a stretch. Spider-Man is still sequestered at Sony, and that studio isn’t likely to let him go any time soon. But Joe Russo’s comments on the matter of a team up for Captain America 3 got me very excited about the possibilities. He told me:
Listen, when I started collecting, The Secret Wars was one of the first books I ever bought, so that’s always been an obsession of mine to see something of that scale done – a crossover. I don’t know if that would ever be possible, with all the different situations at the studios. But I would love to see a lot of characters on screen together."
Name-dropping The Secret Wars? That’s one sure-fire way to get a LOT of comic-book geeks fired up for your sequel. If you haven’t read the Secret Wars storyline, it involved basically every major hero in the Marvel universe being transported to a distant planet to fight every villain in the Marvel universe. It was epic. And if the Russos are going that route, you better plan to see a lot more than Hawkeye in Captain America 3, whatever the sequel ends up being subtitled.
