Is Jeremy Renner going to be playing Hawkeye in 'The Avengers'?

According to Collider, yes:

When it comes to Marvel casting this week, we’re getting incrementally closer to the real thing. The Josh Holloway item was just a rumor. Neil McDonough is “in talks” to play Dum Dum Dugan. But Jeremy Renner has been talking to Marvel about playing Clint Barton for some time, and now the actor is in “final negotiations” to join The Avengers as Hawkeye.

Renner’s star rose considerably over the last year after his Oscar-nominated turn in The Hurt Locker, which opened up such opportunities as Peter Berg’s adaptation of Battleship and Paul Thomas Anderson’s untitled opus on religion. Renner seems to have passed on Battleship, and the Anderson film could take awhile to come together, so the actor remains a free agent ready to don Hawkeye’s purple bow.

The ensemble cast required for The Avengers, which Joss Whedon (Firefly) will direct, is approaching completion. There’s Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man (of course), Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Chris Evans as Captain America, Scarlett Johanssen as Black Widow, and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. (Of course, the big missing piece is Hulk — no deal has been made with Edward Norton to reprise his role from 2008’s The Incredible Hulk.) Heat Vision reports that, to keep the budget under control, Marvel has talked all the featured players into a paycut.

This is all shaping up pretty fantastically. Renner is a great get, and if there is any legitimacy to the Josh Holloway rumor (as Ant-Man, perhaps?)… I would apparently be at a loss for words.

-I dig Renner in this role, personally...thoughts?

Could Jeremy Renner be joining PTA's religion film with PSH?

Well, that's the rumblings found here in Deadline:

After the disappointing box office returns on Paul Greengrass’s thoughtful but vastly expensive action polemic Green Zone, what’s gonna happen with a new Paul Thomas Anderson drama that won’t get made by Universal because of its $35 million budget? I’m hearing talks are serious for Bill Pohlad’s River Road to fully finance a film that will star Philip Seymour Hoffman as a charismatic intellectual who in the 1950s becomes the leader of a start-up religion that takes off like wildfire. The Hurt Locker’s Jeremy Renner is circling the role of a young drifter who becomes his right hand man but begins to question his mentor and the whole belief thing. The presence of Oscar winner Hoffman and Oscar nominee Renner gives PTA another Oscar-bait movie, and a topical one, as the storyline questions long established religions as well as comparative upstarts like Scientology and Mormonism. But the $35 million price tag was blasphemy to some indie distributors who considered the package.

I’m also hearing that PTA’s longtime agent and former Paramount honcho John Lesher is likely to join as producer alongside Anderson’s longtime collaborator, Jo Anne Sellar. River Road seems a strong fit, given Pohlad's affection for auteur fare. He made possible the Terrence Malick-directed The Tree of Life with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, as well as the Warner Bros castoff Fair Game, the Doug Liman-directed drama about outed CIA op Valerie Plame which stars Penn and Noami Watts. Pohlad is principal investor and partner with Bob Berney in the distribution shingle Apparition. It's unclear if Berney will get the PTA film, though it seems right in the distributor's wheelhouse. Apparition next distributes The Runaways for Pohlad.

-From what I've heard about the script, it'd be a great casting choice...thoughts?