Here we go again. It has been two years since the Jeremy Renner-starring “The Bourne Legacy,” and seven years since “The Bourne Ultimatum,” and the question the entire time is: will Matt Damon return to the series? And the actor, time and again, has explained the criteria that would need to be met for that to happen. “I’ve always been open to it if Paul Greengrass is the director and … we’ve just never been able to come up with a story,” he said this spring, once more. “It felt like such a good way to end it the last time, but having said that I love that character… and I’d love to see what happened to him.” So, could it finally be happening?
As you might recall, earlier this week it was announced that Universal was pushing “Bourne 5” from its previous August 2015 to date to July 15, 2016. And according to Latino Review, that’s because director Justin Lin managed to do the impossible—he got Damon to return. Now, Universal did hire Andrew Baldwin to write a new draft of the script this spring, though that was right around the time Damon was one again saying “thanks, but no thanks, but maybe.” But LR suggests that another reason for Damon returning is that the dude needs a box office hit after a string of films—”Elysium,” “Promised Land,” “Monuments Men“—failed to perform as expected. Or maybe they just came up with a helluva story? Or perhaps Universal really wants to get the franchise back on financial track, particularly as ‘Legacy’ didn’t do as well as its predecessors.
We’re still two years out from “Bourne 5” so expect a lot of back-and-forth, denials and cagey answers, but if Damon is back, we’ll be very curious to see what happens to David Webb next…
