The Actress That Almost Beat Hailee Steinfeld For Hawkeye Would Have Been A Better Choice
Before Hailee Steinfeld was cast as Kate Bishop in Hawkeye, Kathryn Newton tested for the role. The revelation was made in the latest installment of Marvel Studios Assembled: The Making of Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania. The documentary, which was recently added to Disney+, offers viewers a behind-the-scenes look at how the film came together.
Kathryn Newton, who portrayed Cassie in Quantumania, also auditioned for the role of Kate Bishop in Hawkeye.
In the special, Quantumania director Peyton Reed explained that he chose Newton to play Scott Lang’s teenage daughter, Cassie, after seeing a 2019 screen test of the actress auditioning for Hawkeye. “I was like, ‘Wow, she has this brightness to her. She’s funny. She has this youthful optimism about her,’” Reed said in the documentary.
Although Newton screen tested alongside Jeremy Renner for the role of Kate Bishop, the coveted part of the beloved archer went to Hailee Steinfeld. Her role in the Disney+ limited series Hawkeye is the actress’s sole credit in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, she has recently expressed her eagerness to return as the new Hawkeye.
“I am so ready to get back at it, Hailee Steinfeld said during an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “I am itching to be on set again with people that do what I do and love what we do. I have such a sense of belonging when I’m on set and a sense of home, and I just love it.” In August 2022, Marvel confirmed that Kate Bishop would return in a Phase Five project, but the details remain unknown.
Young Avengers
Although Marvel Studios has not officially announced a Young Avengers project, one might be in the works due to the recent inclusion of several young heroes from the comics in the MCU. Along with Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) and Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton), Billy (Julian Hillard) and Tommy Maximoff (Jett Klein) were introduced in WandaVision.
Eli Bradley (Elijah Richardson) had a small role in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) was central to the plot of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) had a pivotal role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Iman Vellani’s Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel presents another potential addition to the MCU’s Young Avengers roster.
Marvel Studios can be brutal when it comes to its casting process. Once Hailee Steinfeld was officially cast in Hawkeye and Kathryn Newton took on the role of a teenage Cassie Lang, the actress who portrayed Scott Lang’s daughter in previous Ant-Man films, Emma Furhmann, learned of her axing online.
News of Furhmann’s recasting sparked controversy on social media when the actress said she learned about being replaced after coming across the news on the internet. She expressed her gratitude for the support on Twitter, saying, “Thank you for all your support. It has meant the world to me. I was as sad as you all were to hear the news. I hope that this means there is something else for me in the future of the MCU.”
“I was like, ‘Wow, she has this brightness to her. She’s funny. She has this youthful optimism about her.’”
Quantumania director Peyton Reed on Newton’s Hawkeye audition
After Hailee Steinfeld snagged the role of Kate Bishop, Newton went on to star in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which was released in February. The film had an impressive opening weekend, raking in $106 million in the United States. However, it experienced a massive 69 percent drop in its second weekend at the box office.
Quantumania’s theatrical run concluded with a global gross of $476 million, making it one of the first post-pandemic Marvel Cinematic Universe films to suffer a financial loss. Despite reports of early talks for a fourth Ant-Man film, the lackluster performance of Quantumania has cast doubt on the likelihood of its development.
If the Ant-Man project is scrapped entirely, perhaps it would have been Kathryn Newton’s talents would have been better suited to Hawkeye instead of Hailee Steinfeld.
