The Big Picture

After a seven-year hiatus, the future of the Bourne franchise is uncertain, with doubts about the possibility of a sixth installment. The Bourne movies have historically faced challenges in continuing the series, with long periods of development and a shift in priorities for the director and leading actor. Universal Pictures, once desperate for franchises, now has a diverse slate of successful films, making the continuation of the Bourne saga less necessary and the effort to prolong it less urgent.

It’s now been seven years since audiences got to experience a brand-new Bourne installment. That beats out the five-year gap between The Bourne Ultimatum and The Bourne Legacy as the longest gap between Bourne movies since the franchise started in 2002. With this unprecedented (at least in the 21st century) hiatus for Bourne adventure comes rampant doubt that we’ll ever see a sixth entry in this long-running saga. As of this writing, the odds aren’t good that the Bourne saga is set to go on and on. Though this franchise was producing new installments frequently for nearly 15 years, the Bourne saga seems to have come to a standstill for a multitude of reasons.

Matt Damon Wanted To Pursue Other Things Than The Bourne Franchise
Image via Universal Pictures

While the initial trilogy of Bourne movies was made in reasonably quick order (all three films dropped between 2002 and 2007), the Bourne titles since then have all emerged after substantial periods of development. The franchise’s current hibernation was foreshadowed by how the fourth and fifth entries in the Bourne saga took forever to get off the ground. Of course, that lengthy development process wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who was watching the publicity tour of The Bourne Ultimatum closely. While pushing this film to the general public, director Paul Greengrass and leading man Matt Damon were both quite open about the fact that they were done with the Bourne series for now. Both of these guys wanted to go off and do new things, and their then-current artistic ambitions just didn’t intersect with exploring further Jason Bourne adventures.

Interestingly, an especially revealing interview with Matt Damon at the time of Ultimatum’s release offered a more prescient glimpse into the future than Damon could’ve ever realized. At the time, Damon said that he could see himself returning to play the character if, in 10 years, Paul Greengrass called the actor up to say that he had a fresh new take on the Jason Bourne character. After so much breathing room, Damon imagined there could be something new to do with the character, but until then…Damon and Bourne were separated. Ironically, there would be a nine-year gap between the two Bourne movies headlined by Matt Damon. The leading man of The Great Wall was off by just 12 months!

But if Damon didn’t want to come back, Universal Pictures was still going to make more movies set in the universe of Jason Bourne. Circa 2007, Universal Pictures didn’t have a lot of options for big franchises. Illumination was still three years away from existing, the Fast & Furious saga wouldn’t get revved up to massive box office levels for another two years, and the Jurassic Park franchise was in the middle of a long slumber. In 2007, Universal only had a quartet of movies that cracked $100 million domestically, and one of them was the ludicrously expensive box office dud Evan Almighty. Needless to say, this studio was hooked on Bourne and wasn’t going to let go.

Jeremy Renner Was Supposed To Be Bourne’s New ‘Legacy’
Image via Universal Pictures

But just because Universal was desperate doesn’t mean that it was a pinch to crank out a new Bourne movie. It took five years for The Bourne Legacy to show up, with the studio eventually angling on not recasting Jason Bourne but rather making a new protagonist who could exist side-by-side Damon’s character. Jeremy Renner’s Aaron Cross was thought of as somebody who could go on adventures emulating the tone of a typical Bourne movie but anchored by an actor more open to ongoing Bourne adventures. The movie did OK, but not spectacular box office numbers. While there were initial rumblings of doing a Bourne Legacy sequel, those plans fell by the wayside.

The tormented trouble of getting new Bourne installments off the ground was so apparent that Universal ponied up the big bucks to get Damon and Greengrass to come back for the 2016 installment, Jason Bourne. This project did much better box office than The Bourne Legacy, but the mixed reception that greeted the title seemed to indicate that the time for this character had passed. Though there were initial rumblings of doing more Jason Bourne outings, there’s been nary a whisper about continuing the franchise on the big screen since. For nine years, Universal sweated profusely over finding ways to extend this saga out after The Bourne Ultimatum. Now, all that effort has subsided.

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Maybe Everyone’s Moved on From Jason Bourne
Image via Universal

There’s really no complicated dramatic reason why viewers haven’t seen further Bourne movies. Everybody involved has just shifted their priorities away from the saga. Paul Greengrass is always working as an acclaimed director and has plenty of projects to grab his attention; he doesn’t need to focus on the Bourne movies anymore. Meanwhile, Matt Damon would be the first to admit that he’s now a man over 50 whose primary interest as an actor isn’t in hand-to-hand combat but rather in adult dramas. Recent Damon projects like Stillwater, The Last Duel, and Air reflect the kind of grounded original fare the actor is far more interested in anchoring. He and Ben Affleck have even started up a new production outfit called Artists Equity meant to get auteur-driven features off the ground and profits in the hands of those auteurs. None of these ambitions sound like they’d involve Jason Bourne.

Meanwhile, Universal is far less desperate for franchises than they were even in 2014 when the studio greenlit Jason Bourne. The studio now has a steady stream of Illumination juggernauts and DreamWorks Animation hits dominating its slate, while there is also a slew of franchises on the company’s calendar ranging wildly in size. Universal is in great shape now as a studio no matter how you slice it. While no executive at this company would reject Greengrass and Damon if they came back with a killer idea for a new Bourne sequel, Universal also doesn’t have to exert so much effort trying to prolong this saga anymore. This studio has tons of other franchises now to fill in for and even surpass the box office earnings of the Bourne titles.

Plus, not everything needs to keep going. Not every saga is meant to churn out installments for all of eternity, with no end ever in sight. That’s the default norm of American pop culture in the modern world, as everything from SpongeBob SquarePants to the Stranger Things universe to even Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo is treated as just another brand name that can be stretched on forever to further line the pockets of studio executives. But that’s not how art should function, even stuff meant to just provide punches and popcorn thrills like the Bourne franchise. As the middling Jason Bourne showed, sometimes it’s fine to let things die off. We should all be grateful that the Bourne saga currently seems to be bucking the dominant trend of endless franchise extensions by eschewing the opportunity to deliver a sixth Bourne movie.