14 DAY TRIAL // Great news for fans of Matt Damon as super spy Jason Bourne! After years of speculation and of dancing around the question of whether he’s ever coming back to the role, the actor has confirmed his return for 2016.
Seeing how Jeremy Renner is also locked to play Aaron Cross in “The Bourne Betrayal” in 2016, it’s safe to assume that these two will be sharing the screen together. Jason Bourne and Aaron Cross, can you imagine the damage they can do if they work together?
Finding a replacement for Matt Damon
Shortly after the third “Bourne” movie, Matt Damon made it clear: he was done with the role because he was “too old” to play a convincing killer spy. He could do the spy part, but he believed his body was no longer convincing with the physical stuff.
Plus, he wanted freedom to explore other roles and he had grown tired somewhat of being tied to “Bourne.” Actors usually involved with such huge franchises know how he must have felt only too well: being tied to the franchise and not able to pursue other interests, usually for long stretches of time, is one of the downfalls to doing such a role.
Damon backed out of the franchise also because director Paul Greengrass had stepped down.
So, because the studio would not let such a successful franchise simply die away, they scrambled to find a replacement. They eventually found him in Jeremy Renner, who was off an Oscars run with “The Hurt Locker.” He had already proved he could do action movies and he was famous enough to carry a new “Bourne” film, not to mention that he was itching to get his big break.
The result was “The Bourne Legacy” (2012), seen as an expansion of the Bourne universe in which Bourne was an absence. Renner played a spy much like Bourne, named Aaron Cross, and while the film was good, it simply wasn’t as good as the previous 3 with Damon.
The long-delayed sequel to “The Bourne Legacy”
So, 2 years later, we’re yet to know anything more about a planned sequel. The idea was for the studio to launch a new franchise with Renner, making sequels at the rate of about 1 per year, in the best case scenario.
Renner is locked for a sequel in 2016 but a lot can happen until then. Not to jinx it or anything, but it’s happened before for a studio to announce a movie and then pull the plug on the project before pre-production, for a variety of reasons.
To boot, a couple of weeks ago, rumors started making the rounds that Damon was coming back, which, in turn, meant that Renner was no longer part of the cast. Not so fast!
Matt Damon is coming back and there is strong indication that he might be sharing the screen with Renner.
Confirmation comes from Damon himself
Late last week, good friends Matt Damon and Ben Affleck attended an event together and Affleck spilled the beans on Damon’s Bourne role, joking how he would be out of shape again by the time Matt starts beefing up for the role.
Affleck, as you might have heard, is playing Bruce Wayne / Batman in Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel: Dawn of Justice,” and he’s really bulked up in recent months.
“Yes, next year,” Damon told E! News, making the day of every Bourne fanboy/girl out there. “It'll be in 2016 when the movie will actually come out. [Director] Paul Greengrass is going to do another one and that's all I ever said. I just needed him to say yes.”
He doesn’t say if Renner will be in the film with him, but since it’s unlikely that 2 “Bourne” movies are coming out in 2016, that’s probably what we should expect.
