the bourne trilogy

Twitch broke the news on Monday that actor Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass are joined in talks to return to for another installment in the Bourne franchise. The news comes almost a year after Damon spoke to Movieline about the chances of his return since actor Jeremy Renner‘s appearance in The Bourne Legacy last year.

“There has not been any movement,” he said. “I’ve always been open to it as long as Paul Greengrass directs, I don’t think he’s going to do it.” Damon went on to explain the difficulties and challenges that could come with Greengrass at the helm to follow the events after Legacy, saying “from what I understand, it kind of relives [The Bourne Ultimatum] from a different perspective. What that means, because they use our actors and characters, is that whatever they said [in Legacy] is true and so we’d have to acknowledge it in any Bourne movie that we’d do. And that makes it really tough,” Damon also insinuated the challenge of continuing Bourne’s story after the first three films in which the character was driven to find his identity.

Since then, stories about the film’s development have been minimal, though the interest is still there, as previously insisted by Universal chairman Adam Fogelson who sat down with an interview with The Hollywood Reporter writer Matthew Belloni in February. When asked about plans for franchise after Legacy, Fogelson answered with the following:

“The point of the last movie was to create a universe, a world and characters that give us a lot of freedom and flexibility in how we go forward. Yeah, the movie didn’t perform the way the last one did. It also didn’t cost what the last one did. It performed more along the lines of how the first one did. I absolutely see us doing more Bourne, 100 percent yes. Matt has talked about the possibility of coming back, and we totally respect that and are excited if and when he wants to have conversations. But I think the last movie gave us a big bunch of options to pursue a next chapter.”

Bourne trilogy writer Tony Gilroy directed The Bourne Legacy (2012), the fourth film of the franchise which branched out a new storyline in the franchise based on a series of novels by the late author Robert Ludlum. Its commercial success didn’t match the success of its predecessor, the Greengrass-directed 2007 release of The Bourne Supremacy which recapitulated the $1.2B franchise. However, it was enough after earning $275 million worldwide at the box office to get a fifth film started, according to news broken at Deadline about Renner’s return earlier this month, in addition to a new screenwriter. 

Damon recently reaffirmed his interest in the franchise to reporters while attending the star-studded Los Angeles premiere of his latest film, Elysium.And with now two films in development, there may even be talk of a possible crossover between both characters. It’s very early to tell, of course, but it looks as if things are headed in that direction. But I want to know what you think.

QUESTION: Are you looking forward to the next possible slate of Bourne films? And what do you think the odds will be for a crossover film? Share your thoughts on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and Pinterest.

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