Yesterday evening we caught up with the filmmaking duo Brian Koppelman & David Levien, the screenwriters of “Rounders,” “Ocean’s Thirteen,” “The Girlfriend Experience” and the directing pair behind pictures like “Knockaround Guys.”
Their latest directorial effort “Solitary Man” (written by Koppelman) is due in theaters May 21, and is a mature, soulful and smart picture you should see, featuring an excellent cast which includes Michael Douglas, Susan Sarandon, Jenna Fischer, Mary-Louise Parker, Jesse Eisenberg, Olivia Thirlby, Danny DeVito and Imogen Poots (who literally tears the roof off her small role; this kid is tops, we’re telling you, keep an eye out).
We’ll get into that picture a little deeper in the next little while (plus a few other projects that the pair are working on), but while we had them on the horn, we couldn’t help asking about a pretty juicy story we heard that we couldn’t report at the time.
You’ll recall, despite what some others say, that we broke the story on Paul Greengrass quitting and leaving the ‘Bourne’ franchise. However, a few weeks before Greengrass had quit “Bourne 4” (and a few weeks before we even reported that he left), similar sources told us that Koppelman & Levien were negotiating to write yet another iteration of ‘Bourne 4’ (this would have been a third edition after the George Nolfi and Josh Zetumer versions that no one seemed to wholeheartedly love hence further drafts).
So we asked them point blank if there was any truth to this talk. Their answer? “Let me just say this,” Koppleman said diplomatically after a brief pause. “We love Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon, they are both good friends of ours and we hope that that franchise gets off the ground again one day and if those two guys want to make a movie.”
We kept digging. If they were offered another ‘Bourne’ film would they do it? “Well, yeah, we worked with Matt a couple of times and we’d love to do it again,” Levien said. “We’d love to make a movie with them.”
“If Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass wanted to work together on a Bourne movie, who would we be to say no?” Koppleman posited wryly. We dug, perhaps a little annoyingly, a bit further asking if they’d be willing to write a ‘Bourne’ reboot film if Universal approached them to do so.
But their unequivocal response (“No one’s answering that question”) more than suggests they wouldn’t. Our takeaway? It’s pretty obvious they were hoping to work on the fourth film, but obviously Greengrass was frustrated and walked away (though they kissed and played nice after the fact, and everyone bought it, you can be rest assured Universal was not happy with the massive under performance of the $150 million dollar “Green Zone”). But don’t get that last quote twisted. It sounds like for Koppleman and Levien, it’s ‘Bourne’ with Greengrass and Damon or nothing.
Lots of people are hoping that latter director/star duo will return to the ‘Bourne’ fold, but it might take a few years and a few forgotten first quarter 2010 massive losses before it happens. Luckily, Hollywood holds the deepest grudges, but also has the shortest memory of almost any industry.