Nearly a year ago, Universal Pictures announced a new Jason Bourne movie was in the works and “All Quiet On The Western Front” director Edward Berger was in talks to direct.
With Berger currently out promoting his Pope election thriller “Conclave,” he was asked by Cinema Daily US if any further progress on the new Bourne film has taken place.
It turns out Berger isn’t as locked down for that film as you might think, he tells the outlet:
“It’s really not clear whether…I’m not doing it right now, and I really don’t know what I will do in the future.”
Indeed, Berger is not only promoting “Conclave” and doing the awards campaigning required for that film, but he’s also in post on the Colin Farrell and Tilda Swinton-led Netflix film “The Ballad Of A Small Player” and must finish that before figuring out what’s next for him:
“There’s a bunch of [project] options and I have to bring out this movie, ‘Conclave’ to the theaters, and I have to finish ‘Ballad’ which [will] take me until next summer, and everything that goes beyond that is kind of beyond my comprehension.”
He’s not dismissing Bourne though, on the contrary he’s a big fan of the films but he’s also aware of their legacy and says there’s no point bringing them back unless there’s good reason for it:
“But you know, ‘Bourne’ is a wonderful franchise, and if there ever were an – and I don’t have it – an element that hasn’t been told yet and a good reason to bring it back and for me, to have a good reason to have the feeling, ‘I can make the movie as good as Paul Greengrass did, because he did great, great films, and that’s a very high [bar] to jump over.
And you really need a new agenda of bringing it back, otherwise, there’s really no reason [to do so]. You can only bring it back if you have something new to tell. Something new to add and that would probably be Matt Damon’s only reason to come back.
He’s not going to need money, he’s not going to need to make this. If he can have an inner journey, and if an actor finds that to play then that’s a wonderful challenge, but if you can’t find that, better not make a movie like that.”
From the sounds of it Universal hasn’t found that reason, suggesting the film is earlier in the works than anticipated and won’t be happening for some time.
