Everyone loves a good what-if, right? Let’s go back down memory lane for a second. Once upon a time, Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass abandoned the ‘Jason Bourne,’ franchise after being unable to nail a 4th ‘Jason Bourne’ script (they tried). In the gap, original ‘Bourne’ writer Tony Gilroy was asked to pitch a take, and that eventually became “The Bourne Legacy” (2012), which he directed starring Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross, another Treadstone-like agent out there in the greater ‘Jason Bourne’ universe.
While “The Bourne Legacy” wasn’t a tremendous hit, it did well enough to warrant a sequel evidently, and Justin Lin (“Fast & Furious 6”) was hired to direct what was then known as ‘Bourne 5’ (Andrew Baldwin, who wrote Nicolas Winding Refn’s unmade “Logan’s Run” for Ryan Gosling, was the screenwriter). The rumor was that Jeremy Renner would star alongside Matt Damon, and even producer Frank Marshall said that would be his ultimate “dream.”
Whether that was all taken out of context or what, it was certainly believed by most audiences online that there would be a ‘Bourne’ film eventually with Renner and Damon. However, in a recent Happy Sad Confused podcast talk with Justin Lin, the director suggested, yeah, maybe not so much.
“Yep, ‘Bourne’ was one of them,” Lin said when asked about some of his unmade projects. “It was after I left for ‘Fast 6’ and Universal’s] Donna Langley reached out and said, ‘What do you think about ‘Bourne’ and I was like, ‘Oh man!’ and like, Renner’s amazing. And to this day, I still kinda miss what we were working on.”
Asked details about the film, Lin got a little cagey, but when asked if Matt Damon would have been involved, well, it sounds like he would have not. “Uhh, I had some thoughts,” Lin said with a smile, “But I think Matt [Damon] was done [with the franchise] at that point. Again, I had a great time working on the script, and getting to know Jeremy Renner was such a perk; he’s such a great guy, a great actor, but also a great human being.”
Obviously, the film never came together, and Lin suggests that Damon and Greengrass eventually wanted to come back and do the fifth film, which became “Jason Bourne” (2016), which basically killed their project.
“I think in the middle of doing that [working on ‘Bourne 5’], Matt and Greengrass decided to come back, which is totally cool; it’s their franchise, and I totally understand,” he explained. “But I think the time that I had on it, I think back fondly on it, and there’s actually some stuff in there that I hope to be able to bring to life in other projects cause it was such a great time working with Andrew Baldwin on the script and Jeremy, just hanging out and talking about his character was great.”
Sounds like Renner and Damon was never really a thing and just more of a wishlist scenario in the end and maybe one we’ll never see given that Aaron Cross had sadly gone the wayside in the ‘Bourne’ saga (though Greengrass and Damon were gentlemanly enough to include a little ‘Legacy’ Easter Egg in “Jason Bourne” just to acknowledge it existed).
As we recently revealed, Damon had been working on his own ‘Bourne’ revival project with writer Scott Z. Burns and Frank Marshall, but they couldn’t crack the script together. Instead, Universal moved on to “All Quiet On The Western Front” filmmaker Edward Berger with the hopes of attracting Damon to the project once a script had been developed, so who knows, maybe we’ll get more one day.
Meanwhile, watch the entire Happy Sad Confused conversation below.
