Though it’s been spoken of quite often over the past few months, it’s now being reported that Jeremy Renner is in final negotiations to star as Hawkeye in Marvel’s epic upcoming merging of superhero forces in The Avengers.

Hawkeye will be joining the already-packed lineup including Captain America (Chris Evans), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), The Incredible Hulk (though it remains unknown whether Edward Norton will return or if other options will be used), and lots more.

This movie should become the ultimate dream flick for comic book fanatics all over the world, so long as all of these different story arcs and characters we’ve seen built up are all brought together carefully. Naturally, there’s a growing fear that this plan has gotten too big, and everything might just crash together at the end of the road.

Renner has been around for a while but really broke out the past couple of years with great turns in films like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and The Hurt Locker, which nabbed him an Oscar nomination and went on to win Best Picture. He’s since been involved in many casting rumors and announcements, including being cast in James McTeigue’s Edgar Allan Poe film The Raven and being mentioned as a possible star for Peter Berg’s Battleship, which eventually went to Taylor Kitsch.

The Avengers will be directed by Joss Whedon, and it will be released on May 4, 2012.

[Source: Heat Vision]