Songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman Talk "Rogers: The Musical" from "Hawkeye"

We’re just two weeks away from the debut of Marvel’s Hawkeye on Disney+ and fans are still bussing about the presence of “Rogers: The Musical” in the show’s first trailer. Songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman talked with Marvel about what it was like to bring this musical to life.

Marvel revealed that Shaiman and Wittman, the songwriting duo behind Mary Poppins Returns and many other hits, wrote the musical number from “Rogers: The Musical” that will be featured in Hawkeye.
Shaiman revealed how they were initially asked to join the project:
- “[Scott and I] were at an Academy Award dinner, and I'm sitting there and someone taps me on the shoulder and says, ‘Excuse me, Kevin Feige would love to meet you.’ I knew who Kevin was, and I was like he wants to meet me, really? Turns out Kevin is a film score nerd. He started talking about [the scores I’ve written] one by one and I was like, I cannot believe this is happening. We started trading emails about scores and this and that, and when I would see [Marvel movies] I would send him an email. I guess when this idea came up for Hawkeye, for there to be a musical on Broadway, he luckily thought of us, and [Scott and I] couldn't be more ecstatic about it.”
Wittman admitted that neither of them were well-versed on the MCU upon getting the assignment:
- “We got this assignment during the height of the pandemic, so I had many hours, and I watched many of the movies. Much to my delight, I was really quite amazed at all the kind of sly fun that existed in them and I was hoping to get that into the song.”
Shaiman went a step further to explain that they got a great deal of help from his husband, Lou:
- “It seemed fate that I married a man who was a total Marvel nerd. So, I would go with him as a good husband to go watch all the movies, then we would usually sit in the parking lot of the movie theater, and I'd say what did I just see? How does that all work and who's who, and little by little I started putting all the pieces together. We were both lucky to have [my husband, because] he could just spit out whatever the words are like, you know, ‘Tesseract.’ I never knew that Scott and I would write a song with the word ‘Tesseract’ in it.”
Shaiman also expressed his excitement for fans to finally get a chance to hear this song:
- “We've got some fantastic singers on this track, so I can't wait for people to hear. It's been so thrilling to watch those reaction videos to the trailers. We’ve worked on a lot of stuff that goes around the world, but man, there's nothing like the Marvel fans and how they look [for hidden details] and everything. It was just wonderful to see how happy they were about the musical and that they understand Marvel's sense of humor. They're just so looking forward to it. It's really thrilling.”

About Hawkeye:

Marvel Studios’ Hawkeye is an original new series set in post-blip New York City where former Avenger Clint Barton aka Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) has a seemingly simple mission: get back to his family for Christmas. But when a threat from his past shows up, Hawkeye reluctantly teams up with Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), a 22-year-old skilled archer and his biggest fan, to unravel a criminal conspiracy. The series also features Vera Farmiga, Fra Fee, Tony Dalton, Zahn McClarnon, Brian d’Arcy James and newcomer Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez. Helmed by Rhys Thomas and directing duo Bert and Bertie, Hawkeye debuts exclusively on Disney+ on Nov. 24, 2021.