Hawkeye songwriters want to make a full Marvel musical

The first episode of Marvel’s Hawkeye series on Disney+ gave us a wonderful gift — a snippet of a Marvel musical rendition of the Battle of New York. Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) is seen attending a performance of Rogers: The Musical with his three children before he has to leave. While we only hear one song (Save the City) from the fictitious Marvel musical, it was penned by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, the songwriting duo behind Hairspray, Smash, and Mary Poppins Returns.

While speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman said that their first idea put the focus on regular New Yorkers witnessing the battle, but the pair soon decided that Barton should be watching a version of something he was directly involved with. Wittman said that “It’s important for the Hawkeye character to watch that event that was such a seminal part of his life and feel slightly uncomfortable like, ‘what have they done to my world?’” Shaiman added, “It was a fine line to walk. We knew that we had to write a good song, an entertaining song, something you’d hopefully enjoy, but it also had to make Clint roll his eyes and think, ‘what is this?’”

Although we only got a taste of it in Hawkeye, a full-blown Marvel musical is something Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman would definitely be down for. “Of course!” Wittman said. “Get people to start calling Kevin on the phone and tell him.” Shaiman added that they should probably move fast if they want to make it happen because he bets that “people are already writing it on TikTok.“

There are a million things that you could create in a Marvel musical, especially with Steve Rogers. The fact that he exists in the ’40s as well would allow us to write a whole lot of different genres, so the whole Marvel story would take place over decades. It would be a thrill to get to do that. But for now we’re just extremely excited about the way the show came out.

The first three episodes of Hawkeye are now streaming on Disney+ and you can check out a review from our own Alex Maidy right here.