Matt Damon talks ‘Jason Bourne’ title, ‘search for identity’ and timeline
While attending and receiving a Best Actor Award at the Jameson Empire Film Awards in London, Matt Damon opened up about the upcoming Bourne film, beginning with the name, which is simply Jason Bourne.
“We talked about calling it The Bourne Something,” Damon told Empire, “but I think the idea was to separate this film from the others, because so much time has passed since we did one. Ours are really about identity, and the guy’s search for identity, and at the end of the third one, he says ‘I’m no longer Jason Bourne’. So without giving too much away, the new one starts with the implications of that: okay, then who is he? What is this identity that’s just sitting out there unclaimed? What does it mean? I think the title will make more sense when you see the movie, but it felt right because it felt pertinent to the story we were telling and also different from the others – in the right way. A decade has passed…”
Damon has regularly hinted at the plot, a story which will reflect our financially risky times and is firmly set in a post-Edward Snowden world. In his last film, Damon’s Bourne was doing some whistleblowing of his own, releasing the information about the illegal program codenamed Treadstone that created him and then going firmly off the grid.
Director Paul Greengrass also returns to the franchise, once again directing Damon with Alicia Vikander,Tommy Lee Jones, Riz Ahmed and Vincent Cassel all having roles. Julia Stiles returns to reprise her role from previous films.
More from Empire can be found HERE
The new film, Jason Bourne will arrive in theaters on July 29.