Paul Greengrass Says Alicia Vikander & Riz Ahmed’s Characters Are Part Of The Future Of The 'Jason Bourne' Franchise

The future of a franchise rides on how “Jason Bourne” opens this weekend. With Universal trying and somewhat faltering to keep the series alive with 2012’s spinoff “The Bourne Legacy,” the hope is that the pairing of Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon will once again spark the magic of the original trilogy. So far, the verdict is quite mixed (here’s our review), but the director reveals that new film lays down the groundwork for new installments, particularly with the addition of a couple of new characters.

Alicia Vikander‘s CIA agent and Riz Ahmed‘s tech giant are added to the fabric of Jason Bourne’s world in the new movie, bringing the story into the era of mass surveillance and social media. And for Greengrass, those characters will be part of where the series goes next.

“These franchises are really difficult to build for all the studios, and if you’re lucky enough to have been associated with one as I have, one that people love, you want the best for it. Renewing it, giving it somewhere to go that feels organic as opposed to just stuck in there, it is the hardest thing. That’s what I wanted to do. Once I decided to do another, it became very important to me to try, with some subtlety and elegance, to hand it back to Universal with places to go and characters that take it forward in a way that felt elegant and not false,” he told Deadline.

READ MORE: Matt Damon Apparently Only Has Around 25 Lines Of Dialogue In “Jason Bourne”

“Alicia’s character was part of that. Riz Ahmed’s character was, also. I wanted those characters to be of our landscape, today. ‘Bourne Ultimatum‘ and ‘Bourne Supremacy‘ were very much films of the mid-90s and mid-2000s. But we’re in a very different world now, and the audience that goes to see these movies now has a different way of looking at the world,” he added. “Theirs is a world dominated by social media, and the entire digital realm. I wanted to create characters that lived in their world, and hopefully somebody might want to pick that up. I’m sure they will, and you’ve got places to go with Bourne and with the other characters….it was an important part of the creative mission for me.”

And while “Jason Bourne” leaves an avenue open for the story continuing, and Damon is no longer completely shutting the door on playing the title character again, for Greengrass, he too is keeping his options open, though it does sound like he’s in no hurry to return.

“Listen, at the end of Ultimatum, I felt very strongly that I was done, and I said so. Here we are all those years later, talking. It took me nearly ten years to feel that I had another one to make. I’m not going to make that mistake now,” he explained. “All I know is I really enjoyed doing it and I’m really proud of it. I think we’ve revived it and got it back to where it needs to be. I think that I’m going to have a holiday, and then I’ll go off and do some other movie. That’s sort of as far ahead as I can see. And it’s important to see how it does, and that audiences want to know what happens in his journey.”

We’ll soon see if the franchise is re-Bourne (sorry) — “Jason Bourne” opens today.