Jeremy Renner will head up The Bourne Legacy

It’s time to call off the search, because Jeremy Renner has officially been offered the lead in the next Bourne film, The Bourne Legacy .

After an exhaustive search by Universal Pictures for somebody capable of filling Matt Damon’s sizeable shoes in the fourth Bourne film, they appear to have their man in Renner.

Which means Bourne fans can all breathe a sigh of relief. Renner’s casting puts to bed fears that Universal would cast a fresh young reboot-happy twink (think Zac Efron) in the role.

With Renner, though, they’ve found an actor who’s the same age as Damon (yes, 40), and has shown similarly formidable chops in both the acting and action departments.

Renner seems to be the go-to guy for big action reboots at the moment. The Hurt Locker star was also recently drafted in to appear in the next Mission: Impossible movie, and possibly continue that series in Tom Cruise's stead.

This fourth Bourne sequel will be set in the same universe as the first three films, but will train its focus on a new character while Bourne himself takes a breather.

The film has been written and will be directed by Tony Gilroy, who also contributed the scripts for the Damon-led Bourne films.

Filming kicks off this September, with a release date of 3 August, 2012 in place.

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.