“Jason Bourne” is back, and there’s no question that it’s a big hit. Questions are already being asked of both Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass about whether or not they’ll return, and both aren’t making the same mistake as last time in saying that they’re done with the franchise. However, as Greengrass tells Empire, he’s always taken the approach of keeping his options open as he figures out whatever his next movie might be.
“I don’t set out consciously to rule in or out anything,” he said, noting that the long-brewing Martin Luther King picture “Memphis” and the adaptation of George Orwell‘s “1984” remain on his plate of possibilities. And even pictures that don’t seem like an appropriate fit, he’ll take a look at, including the James Cameron-produced “Fantastic Voyage” remake.
“I remember ‘Fantastic Voyage,’ James [Cameron] asking if I’d have a look at that. And they had a draft, and it actually had twenty or thirty absolutely brilliant pages, it was a good script, and normally I wouldn’t have been interested in that, but a) it was him, and b) it’s really, really good. But I could never get beyond the fact that you’re shrinking people down and it just doesn’t feel like me. But it’s good to be interested in everything,” Greengrass shared.
Essentially, he prefers projects that he can connect with personally and that can also reflect the world around him. And the ‘Bourne’ series in particular has allowed him to address political concerns in the context of a popcorn movie. Certainly, “Jason Bourne” is very 2016, touching on social media and the surveillance state, and for Greengrass there was also one other key element that made it unique.
“What was different about this one to the previous two that I did was that we had a screenplay going in which we never did before. If you talk to anybody, that was the problem, that was what made [‘The Bourne Supremacy‘ and ‘The Bourne Ultimatum‘] so arduous to make, because you were having to find the film as you went along, which is very scary. Now you can never know everything about a film, nor should you, because a film should be a journey of discovery, but you need a decent roadmap, and that’s what we had with this one,” he said.
And having some idea of where you’re going saves everyone time. As Greengrass notes, ‘Ultimatum’ took 135 days to shoot, where “Jason Bourne” clocked in at 95 days. And to hear the director tell it, while Tony Gilroy and Scott Z. Burns put their pens to the previous films, so did Greengrass and editor Chris Rouse, who are credited with this picture.
“Chris and I wrote on the two ‘Bourne’ movies that I made, to be honest, we just didn’t bother to get credited. And you know, it wasn’t necessary; there were lots of other writers. This one, it started with us, so it wasn’t like a big step from our point of view. It was more of a continuation of how it had been before,” he told The Verge.
The latest chapter of the ‘Bourne’ saga seemingly ignores the events of spinoff/side-quel “The Bourne Legacy,” but for superfans who look very closely, there is an oblique reference to the programs in that film. But beyond that, there were no notions of bringing in Jeremy Renner‘s Aaron Cross.
“Never a consideration for this project. Jeremy is a great actor. I just wanted to tell a Jason Bourne story. That’s all I wanted to tell, and that was all I was going to make. As for what happens in the future, frankly that’s not my job,” he told Cinemablend.
And really, as long as Universal can stay in the Bourne business with Greengrass and Damon, they likely won’t be picking up the phone to call Renner anytime soon.
“Jason Bourne” is now playing.