Jeremy Renner to Produce and Star in Steve McQueen Biopic

(HMG Celebrity News) – Two time Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner, continues to be one of the hottest stars in Hollywood right now, but is looking to make his own movies too. Renner, who is set to start shooting the heroes ensemble, The Avengers as Hawkeye, also recently grabbed lead roles in The Bourne Legacy, Mission Impossible, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, while voicing an animal character for Ice Age 4. Sounds exhausting! But meanwhile, Renner has setup his own production company, The Combine, and is attempting to push through a biopic of Steve McQueen into production. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Renner intends to play the legendarily rebellious actor, McQueen, and has enlisted James Gray (We Own The Night, Two Lovers) to write the screenplay based on on two McQueen biographies written by Marshall Terrill – Portrait of an American Rebel and The Life and Legend of a Hollywood Icon. Video director Ivan Zacharias would make his directorial debut on the untitled project.

McQueen, who was a hell raiser even in his youth, got his big break in the TV show “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” and became the highest paid actor of the mid 70′s, after starring in the “The Magnificent Seven,” and went on to other great films like “The Great Escape,” “Papillon,” “Bullitt,” “The Getaway,” and “The Thomas Crown Affair.”  McQueen died in 1980 at the age of 50, after an operation to remove metastatic tumors in his abdomen and neck.