Matt Damon has confirmed that he will be playing Jason Bourne again, and that Paul Greengrass, director of The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Identity (the second and third of the Bourne film series) is set to return as the director for a slated release date of a fifth Bourne movie in 2016.
On E! News, Matt Damon's fellow actor and friend Ben Affleck blurted out that Damon "is going to be doing a Bourne movie next fall". Damon confirmed what was properly an intentional slip-up from Affleck, saying that "I just needed him [Paul Greengrass] to say yes".
There was much speculation whether or not Damon would be returning to one of his most famous roles. In fact, Paul Greengrass told the press that another Bourne film with Damon was "a figment of someone's imagination". Greengass also stated that he "didn't have another one [Bourne film] in me" and that he wanted to "move on and do different things". Greengrass has done other projects since his last Bourne film in 2007, such as the hit Captain Phillips starring Tom Hanks and the not quite so successful Green Zone, also starring Matt Damon.
Matt Damon was practically a household name before he became the title character of The Bourne Identity. Both Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are famous for working together on such films like Dogma and Good Will Hunting, the latter earning them Academy Awards and Golden Globes for best Screenplay. Matt Damon captured even more movie audiences in 2002 when he portrayed the amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne in an action and suspense film based on Robert Ludlum's best-selling book series. The late author's book series has since been picked up by Eric Van Lustbader at the helm, and he has written nine novels in the past decade. The first of these non-Ludlum books, The Bourne Legacy, has already been made into a film with Jeremy Renner as the lead character. The plan was to have Renner return in a fifth Bourne movie directed by Justin Lin of Fast and Furious, but the return of Damon and Greengrass has changed those plans.
The plot of the fourth Matt Damon as Jason Bourne movie is not yet announced, nor is there a working title. Perhaps it will be an adaption of the fifth book, The Bourne Betrayal. There are rumors that the Jeremy Renner and Matt Damon series will be merged together, which could veer the Jason Bourne film series quite far from its literary source material.
