Feb 26, 2008

Bourne Reborn

AICN picked up on a small mention of a fourth Bourne movie in the midst of a larger Variety article about the future of Universal and its new regime. "More recently," says the trade, "[executives] Shmuger and 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." That's all the information given, but it looks like things have progressed beyond Damon's saying he'd "be interested" into something more concrete. But can they get Tony Gilroy back to script, or have all of his Michael Clayton Oscar nominations solidified his desire to direct? Either way, it's great news that this franchise is continuing after hitting a high point with the third installment last year. I'm not worried that Ludlum never wrote a fourth book in the series; the last two movies have already eschewed the books' plots entirely, so that shouldn't make a difference. Or maybe they can now go back and take some of the best elements that the never used from Ludlum's series and incorporate them into their fourth film! That would be cool.

2 comments:

Rogue Spy 007 said...

If they get a good script for it, then I would love to see Bourne 4. I loved the first 3.

Tanner said...

The more I think about it, the more I think it would be really cool if they NOW went and tried to work in some of the plot--or at least the setpieces--of Ludlum's novels, even though they've already used the TITLES. We've seen a lot of Bourne in Europe, so how about taking the Hong Kong/Forbidden City locations from the Supremacy book? That would be cool. They could also use the whole Marie kidnapping plot, but with Nikki instead.

I'd also like to see the Cayman Island stuff from Ultimatum, and more of the cool stuff that was cut from Identity, like the guy in the wheelchair. They could even introduce Carlos at this point!

I loved the Russian version of New London, CT (a fake American city to train spies ala The Experts) as the setting for the finale of Ultimatum, but I suppose that doesn't make much sense in a post-Cold War world.