When I did the press junket for The Bourne Ultimatum, Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass seemed pretty certain that they wouldn’t be returning to the Jason Bourne character for some time to come. Neither wrote it off completely, but they were obviously excited to move on to other projects, like the adaptation of Imperial Life in the Emerald City. (Damon actually said that he felt sort of like a prostitute having two number threes coming out in the same summer, so I really thought he was leaving the possibility of a fourth Bourne open only in a friendly way)
Now a Variety article is indicating that maybe these guys are returning to their extraordinarily popular character sooner than thought. Details are slim (here’s the whole of it: ‘On tap is a fourth “Bourne” movie…’ and then a few paragraphs later: ‘More recently, [Marc] Shmuger and [David] Linde landed Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon
for a fourth “Bourne” movie, even though the director and star seemed
ready to wrap it up after three pics.’), but it sounds like this is an imminent project and not some far off pipe dream.
I trust Greengrass and Damon when it comes to this character, but what’s the story here? Unless they do a Bourne version of First Blood, I can’t imagine where the character goes now. Maybe they take the script of the next Steve Martin lowest common denominator family comedy and retool it so that a formerly amnesiac international assassin has to contend with a weekend at the beach with his huge family. Wetworks by the Dozen or Sniper of the Bride. Think of the TV spin-off possibilities (by the way, I know that some dipshit at TBS is feeling really inspired by this concept right now).