Matt Damon is currently on double duty: shooting ‘Bourne 5’ with Paul Greengrass, which is already underway, but having enough leeway to escape to do press for his starring role in Ridley Scott’s “The Martian.” As Damon does the rounds, new details on the fifth ‘Bourne’ movie are trickling out. Damon only teased a few morsels, but suggested Jason Bourne has been hiding and off the radar for 12 years.
“[Bourne] has his memory back, but that doesn’t mean he knows everything. It’s 12 years since Jason Bourne has been on the grid. So we have to answer the questions, Where’s he been? What’s he doing? What gets him going again? So once we solved all that, then we had a movie,” he told the New York Daily News.
READ MORE: Matt Damon Talks "Post-Snowden" World Of ‘Bourne 5’
So, what is the inciting element that forces Bourne to leave his den, get back onto the grid, and presumably come to the attention of various law enforcement agencies? That’s unknown at the moment, but Damon has said the post-Edward Snowden world influenced the awakening of the character for him and Paul Greengrass. Damon is actually co-writing the film with Greengrass and longtime ‘Bourne’ editor Christopher Rouse)
The NYDN also talked to Damon about superhero movies, and it turns out that Damon passed on the “Daredevil” role before it went to his friend Ben Affleck.
"For us it was always ‘Daredevil’ — that’s the comic we read when we were kids," Damon said. "But when that one came along [in 2003)]I chickened out, because I couldn’t tell. I hadn’t seen the director [Mark Steven Johnson‘s] work and I didn’t know. So I just said, ‘No.’ Ben was like, ‘I gotta do it.’"
Pressed about superhero movies and what might have been with "Daredevil" — though it’s clear he dodged a bullet — Damon said, "If Chris Nolan came up to me and said, ‘I want to do Daredevil,’ I would be in. Just putting that out there.". Dare to dream.
‘Bourne 5’ opens on July 29, 2016 and production started a few weeks back, so presumably they’re shooting the scenes without Jason Bourne right now.
