Marvel’s Hawkeye is about to launch on Disney+ as an action-packed TV series – and that's because the original plan for a Hawkeye solo movie was simply too packed with details that needed explaining.
During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, producer Trinh Tran explained why Hawkeye was eventually turned into a TV series.
“It allows us the creative flexibility to explore the characters a lot more because we have the time and space to do so,” she explained. “We decided to move Hawkeye from the feature side over to the Disney+ side for that very reason.”
The Hawkeye TV series has been in the works for a while, with Marvel boss Kevin Feige confirming that Hawkeye almost had his own solo movie. Now, Marvel producer Trinh Tran has explained why it was so important to turn the project into a TV series. And it’s all about how much story they have to tell.
“The big question was, ‘How are we going to fit all of this into a two-hour timeframe? We have an Avenger whose backstory we haven’t quite had time to explore yet,” she explained. “We also have to introduce a new character [Kat Bishop], as well as allow enough time for them to bond and create that special dynamic that everybody finds so appealing in the comics’.”
Although Kate Bishop (played by Hailee Steinfeld) will be well known to comic book fans, the Hawkeye TV series marks her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut. Here, the character is a self-taught archer and Hawkeye fan who draws Clint Barton’s attention by masquerading as Ronin – Hawkeye’s deadly alter-ego who made an appearance in Avengers: Endgame. This show will also introduce Echo, who will be getting her own spin-off show in future.
There’s certainly a lot of backstory to cover, so it makes sense for Marvel to develop Hawkeye into a TV series rather than a movie – even more so considering the phenomenal success of WandaVision and other MCU series.
“In moving it over, it allowed us six hours, three times as much time, which really gave us the creative flexibility we needed to tell the story,” added Tran. “But challenges come with it as well. We have a process at Marvel, and we try to maintain that same process both on the feature side and the TV series side. We treat it as one process that works well for us.”
“But things happen faster on the TV end,” she said. “We have the same amount of time that we normally do on the feature end, but we have three times as much content that we have to deliver in a shorter time span.”
If you need to get caught up before Hawkeye begins this week, we've got a full MCU timeline for the character, and if you want to know what's next, we've got a full list of upcoming MCU projects.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.