Since "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" hit U.S. theaters last April 14, the superhero sequel has grossed more than a whopping $300 million in box office sales, the Hollywood Reporter has learned.
But those who have seen the film might be wondering where was Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye when S.H.I.E.L.D. was being covertly attacked by HYDRA from within. After all, he is one of the organization's best field agents and has a solid combat-partner relationship with Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow.
The obvious answer is probably due to budget issues since Renner is a fast growing star. But according to the film's screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeeley, Hawkeye's absence was mainly caused by the sequel's star power.
Markus and McFeeley revealed to Cinema Blend that with the introduction of Anthony Mackie's Falcon and Sebastian Stan's Bucky a.k.a the Winter Soldier, coupled with the strong involvement of Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury and Cobie Smulder's Maria Hill in the storyline, Hawkeye might not get the appropriate quality screen time if he was incorporated into the film.
McFeeley said, "We knew we wanted Falcon there, we knew we wanted [Black Widow]. You're introducing Winter Soldier. Fury's got a bigger part in this one. It just started to seem like he (Hawkeye) was going to kind of get a crappy part."
Markus added, "If we were going to use him, we really wanted to use him well."
The screenwriters also clarified that they intended to include a line in the script to explain to audiences what Hawkeye doing at the time when Fury "died" or when the organization crumbled to pieces. Unfortunately, this was cut out during the final editing of the film.
"We toyed around with it, and maybe even shot a line or at least in a draft there's a line where we explained he's off somewhere doing something else," McFeeley said.
As to what Haweye's secret mission was about, the site speculated that details about it might be explained or even shown in the upcoming film, "The Avengers: Age of Ultron."