Renner plays a new special ops agent who comes into conflict with the organisation that created him in the forthcoming The Bourne Legacy, while Damon has stepped away from the saga altogether for the time being. The latter has not ruled out returning in the future, however, and producer Frank Marshall told Empire there was no reason a fifth film could not incorporate both actors.
“You see there are several different programmes in the movie with different skill sets,” he said. “All possibilities are open. My dream is that in the next one we see Matt and Jeremy team up.”
Renner’s character is named Aaron Cross, and the actor said he was “coming from a completely different background to Jason [Bourne]”. He added: “He knows exactly who he is; he signed up to this ... He wants to be part of a team. I can tell you he was in the military then he joined the programme. He’s a person who wants to be part of something ... to have a sense of purpose. But then it’s taken away.”
Writer-director Tony Gilroy, who wrote the first three Bourne movies and is taking the director’s chair for the fourth, said his task was to find a way to move the drama forward in the latest instalment after The Bourne Ultimatum appeared to wrap up the original trilogy smartly.
“If you think of the first three Bourne films as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, then we’re showing you Elsinore,” he said. “You thought you were seeing something you weren’t. What if there’s a much larger story? What if Treadstone wasn’t the only black-ops programme?
“I had never spent one moment thinking about how to do a sequel to Bourne Ultimatum. I first came in for two weeks just to spitball. I had a very random idea ... so we started with that and it got more and more exciting. All of a sudden I was staring at something that had a great deal of resonance and was soulful and uncynical.”
The Bourne Legacy arrives in the UAE on August 23.
