Any hopes you’ve had of Matt Damon reprising his role in The Bourne Identity franchise will be squashed after reading this post.  According to the director Paul Greengrass he will not be directing another one any time soon. And Matt Damon has always maintained he will not make the films without Paul, so one plus one equals two. But that’s not to say there won’t be another Bourne film, it just won’t have Greengrass and Damon.  Says Paul:

“When I was honest with myself last Autumn, and I was starting to get going on other things, you just come to a point where you realize you’ve done it.

“You don’t have anything more to contribute to a franchise that needs to continue obviously, and in order to continue, a franchise needs to be rebooted and reenergized by new perspectives.

Speaking at the Green Zone premiere this past weekend, Damon said of Bourne being recast with a younger actor:

“I think they have a good way to do a prequel with someone else, and basically make it about the Bourne identity, the actual identity. Any studio is interested in making it an evergreen that can just go on and on and on, and it never will with our character because he’s resolved his issues now.

“He’s got his memory back three times now. I don’t think anybody wants to see me say ‘I don’t remember’ again, but I think what we could do is that you can do some movies with another actor, anyone, whether it’s Ryan Gosling or Russell Crowe or Denzel Washington.

“He’s Jason Bourne, and at the end of his one or two or three movies, you see them getting ready to pass the identity onto me, so it just becomes like a 007, it becomes the name that they give this certain person who is uniquely positioned.”

Photo:  WENN