Earlier this year, Matt Damon said that he wouldn’t make another Jason Bourne film.
Now, it appears, he will do one after all.
Just when the Bourne franchise seemed resigned to moving on without him – the Bourne Legacy saw Jeremy Renner in the lead role, albeit as a different agent – Damon told E!News that he would return as the CIA assassin for the fourth time.
“Yes, next year,” said the 44-year-old actor at a celebration for the HBO show Project Greenlight, a joint venture with his best friend Ben Affleck.
“It'll be in 2016 when the movie will actually come out. [Director] Paul Greengrass is going to do another one and that's all I ever said. I just needed him to say yes.”
It was, in fact, Affleck who let the cat out the bag when he told E1News: “Well, [Matt's] going to be doing a Bourne movie next fall when I've just lost any semblance of physical fitness”.
Damon starred in three of the Bourne films, two of which were directed by Greengrass. Damon was adamant that he wouldn’t do another film unless Greengrass was at the helm.
That appeared to be set in stone as Greengrass said he saw no point in returning to the franchise in an interview last year.
“In the end I felt I had given it my all in two films I'm very proud of and didn't want to make another if I didn't believe it could be as good if not better,” he said. “I couldn't come up with an idea, and the business reality of franchises is that when a studio has a Bourne, they're obliged to make one every couple of years. I discovered in my heart I didn't have another one in me.”
Fans of the films should rejoice at this sudden change of heart.