Tradecraft: Who Will Accept The Bourne Legacy? 

This isn't really news, but I guess any traction on a new Bourne film is worth reporting. According to Deadline, pretty much every good-looking actor between the ages of 21 and 35 is being considered as the lead in the next Bourne movie. You probably assumed that already, right?  Of course you did.  Remember, as we've heard many times before, this new lead actor won't actually be playing the same character Matt Damon played; he'll be playing another character, making this film a spinoff rather than a sequel.  Which seems really stupid to me, but I guess I should wait and see where writer/director Tony Gilroy goes with this; he has a good track record.  But can you imagine if EON had said that George Lazenby would be playing 009 or 0011 instead of 007 after Sean Connery left the franchise, in hopes that Connery would come back later? History might have played out more or less the same with Connery returning once more, but the best film in the series would have been ruined! The point is, you don't need to change the character to change the actor. Just give us another Jason Bourne (by which I mean the David Webb Jason Bourne) instead of another character who's clearly treading water while the studio prays for Damon to return. Anyway. Deadline's Mike Fleming offers a laundry list of hot young actors on Universal's wish list here. I'm not going to repeat the whole list because you can probably guess them all anyway, and it doesn't mean anything till someone's actually cast. Two interesting (non-Gemini) contenders on opposite ends of the age spectrum with previous movie spy experience include Alex Pettyfer and Michael Fassbender. I admit, there's something amusing about the idea of Alex Rider stepping into Robert Ludlum's world... but not that amusing.