It’s been nearly a decade since Jason Bourne last sprang into action. Across the original trilogy – Identity, Supremacy, and Ultimatum – the amnesiac spy saga reinvented the cinematic espionage genre from the ground-up. And while it has returned since then – in 2012’s Jason Bourne-lite The Bourne Legacy, and 2016’s Jason Bourne, which reunited Matt Damon with director Paul Greengrass – things have been quiet on the Bourne front for a while. Except, there were rumblings in late 2023 that the Bourne saga might return – and with a particularly exciting director in Edward Berger, the man behind All Quiet On The Western Front and Conclave.
As he prepares for the release of his casino-set thriller Ballad Of A Small Player, Berger states he’s still got an interest in tackling a Bourne movie. “That’s all in the stars,” he tells Empire. “I’d love to do it, but it depends on the script — whether we can find something for Matt Damon to play that he hasn’t before, and something that I don’t feel Paul Greengrass or the other directors have done.” Given the seismic impact of the original trilogy, the bar has been set high. “[Bourne] has such a legacy,” says Berger. “You don’t want to make a film where people say, ‘Ah, it’s not as good as the others.’ There are many hurdles.”
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For now, he’s already hard at work on his next film, The Riders, starring Brad Pitt as “a very masculine guy who goes in search of his wife, and finds his masculinity falls apart on the journey”. Beyond that? Maybe it’s time for Jason Bourne to reappear.