- "Avengers" star Jeremy Renner said he rejected Marvel's offer to return to "Hawkeye" over low pay.
- The actor said that he was offered half of his season one salary for a potential second season.
- He blamed the dispute on who he called "penny pinchers" working at Disney, rather than Marvel Studios.
Jeremy Renner said he decided not to return for season two of "Hawkeye" because Disney offered him half the salary he received for the first season.
The actor played the superhero Hawkeye in the 2012 film "The Avengers," which is credited with turning the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the sprawling franchise that has earned more than $31 billion at the global box office, making it the highest-grossing movie series of all time.
Hawkeye is one of the few original Avengers who did not get a standalone movie. Instead, Renner led the Disney+ "Hawkeye" TV series in 2021 alongside Hailee Steinfeld, who plays Hawkeye's successor, Kate Bishop.
Steinfeld is expected to reprise her role in future Marvel projects. But Renner said in an episode of "The High Performance Podcast" shared on Thursday on Tiktok: "They asked me to do season two, and they offered me half the money. I'm like, 'Well, it's going to take me twice the amount of work for half the amount of money'."
Renner is also not among the cast members who have been announced so far for the 2026 blockbuster "Avengers: Doomsday."
Renner said that the negotiations for Hawkeye happened following a snowplow incident in 2023, which left him with 38 broken bones and took him months to recover from. He suggested that the low offer and his injuries may have been linked.
"I'm like, 'I'm sorry, why? Did you think I'm only half the Jeremy because I got ran over?' Maybe that's why you want to pay me half of what I made on the first season?"
He added: "And this is not Marvel mind you. This is not even really Disney, it's just the penny pinchers, the accountants. I told them to go fly a kite at the insult offer and so we didn't see eye to eye on that, sadly."
Renner said he "would still love to do" more "Hawkeye" but wants to be paid the same amount as he was for the first season.
"It's a little disheartening that didn't happen, but that's fine. I'm happy to let that go, because my body's probably thanking me that I'm not doing that right now."
Renner's complaints follow a lawsuit Scarlett Johansson brought a lawsuit against Disney in October 2021, after her solo movie "Black Widow" was released simultaneously in theaters and on Disney+ during the pandemic.
Johansson said the distribution strategy violated her contract and cost her millions in income, because her salary would've been dictated by the box office returns. The two parties settled for an unknown amount.
Marvel Studios and Disney didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
