Definitely no more Bourne for Damon

Bourne fans be warned: this news could lead to rage, depression or a prolonged sulking session.

While out and about promoting Green Zone this weekend, director Paul Greengrass confirmed that he will never make another Bourne film.

Meanwhile, Matt Damon said he’d never make another Bourne film without Greengrass. In other words, get ready to re-watch Identity - Ultimatum a lot: there won’t be any more Bourne films starring Matt Damon. Ever.

There were, however, hints dropped that the franchise could live on in a new “rebooted and reenergized” form. CHUD spoke to Greengrass, who said:

“When I was honest with myself last Autumn, and I was starting to get going on other things, you just come to a point where you realize you’ve done it.

"You don’t have anything more to contribute to a franchise that needs to continue obviously, and in order to continue, a franchise needs to be rebooted and reenergized by new perspectives.”

So, would this mean a prequel re-casting Bourne younger? Matt Damon definitely things it’s a possibility:

“I think they have a good way to do a prequel with someone else, and basically make it about the Bourne identity, the actual identity. Any studio is interested in making it an evergreen that can just go on and on and on, and it never will with our character because he’s resolved his issues now.

“He’s got his memory back three times now. I don’t think anybody wants to see me say ‘I don’t remember’ again, but I think what we could do is that you can do some movies with another actor, anyone, whether it’s Ryan Gosling or Russell Crowe or Denzel Washington.

“He’s Jason Bourne, and at the end of his one or two or three movies, you see them getting ready to pass the identity onto me, so it just becomes like a 007, it becomes the name that they give this certain person who is uniquely positioned.”

We'll tag this one The Spider-Man Effect, though many a franchise have tried it (off the top of our heads, there was that Young Indiana Jones show starring Sean Patrick Flanery back in the '90s). Is it right for Bourne?

Well, there's stacks of backstory there, and plenty of places to go with it. But if this just becomes a case of The Bourne Overkill , we're checking out right here.

Is Bourne Bourne without Damon?

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.