Renner for Hawkeye?

I’ve been hearing “Jeremy Renner for Captain America!” cries for quite a while now, a chorus that I myself joined after recently watching THE HURT LOCKER, but according to new talk via Empire, Renner may be up for the part of a different Avenger entirely.

“I met with the Marvel guys, actually, but we didn’t talk about Captain America. But one of the writers, Zak Penn, we’ve become friends over time and he was thinking maybe Hawkeye could be interesting. He sounds like an interesting character.”

I’m not exactly sure why he’s shutting down the idea of playing the Cap’n in favor of the much less prestigious Hawkeye, but I’m intrigued. Let’s hear more.

“If I was a betting man, I would bet that Hawkeye would probably show up in Thor, and then be in The Avengers,” he said. “But do I know for sure? I can’t say. But I’d love for that to happen. It’d be fun.”

So he’s not even getting his own movie? I mean that makes sense as it’s, you know, Hawkeye, but why is he not playing the Captain?

Right now I can’t really see THE AVENGERS coming together cohesively. I think it’s going to be a jumblef*ck of trying to explain why Norse gods can coexist with gamma mutants and super-soldiers, and I think more than one film might be the only way to go. Your thoughts about Renner, Hawkeye and the Avengers in general?