Matt Damon is Ready to Wake up the Bourne Franchise and is Looking for Ideas

This year marks a pair of remarkable milestones when it comes to Matt Damon‘s Hollywood career.

It’s now been 20 years since The Departed hit theaters and a full decade since Damon’s latest turn as his iconic action hero, in Jason Bourne.

via: EW

Matt Damon hasn't given up on Jason Bourne — and he wants your help bringing him back to the big screen.

The star of four films in the Bourne franchise hasn't stepped back into the character in a decade, with 2016's Jason Bourne as the latest entry. But in an interview with Parade on Thursday, he says he's ready to change that.

"We're always looking to try to get another one of those because we loved it, everyone who worked on them," he told the outlet. "So there’s always some attempt going on to write, to come up with a new story. So if you have anything, let us know."

Ten years without a new Bourne film isn't the result of a lack of interest or effort.

In 2023, EW learned that a new Bourne film was in the works from Edward Berger, the Swiss-Austrian director behind 2022's awards juggernaut All Quiet on the Western Front. At the time, the project was without a script and even a star, as Damon's involvement was not confirmed.

Deadline Hollywood, which first reported the news, claimed that Damon would be approached once a script materialized, but what steps would be taken were Damon to say no were not clear.

Universal Pictures, the studio behind the franchise, has already shown that it's comfortable churning out more Bourne with or without Damon, however.

Jeremy Renner starred in the franchise's fourth entry, 2012's The Bourne Legacy, not as Damon's character, but as Aaron Cross, an agent with a twisty connection to the series' mysterious central organization, Treadstone. Universal also produced a Bourne series called Treadstone, which ran for a single season on the USA Network and starred Jeremy Irvine as the CIA operative John Randolph Bentley.

Damon explained at the time of Legacy's release that he absented himself from the project because Paul Greengrass, the director of the second and third films in the franchise, was not attached to direct the fourth. That job went to Tony Gilroy, but Greengrass returned for Jason Bourne, and with him, Damon.

Greengrass has made four films since Jason Bourne — 22 July, News of the World, The Lost Bus, and The Uprising. Damon has starred in many more, including The Rip, Oppenheimer, The Last Duel, and his latest, The Odyssey from director Christopher Nolan, releasing July 17.

Damon has not said that his participation in a potential sixth franchise entry is dependent on Greengrass, like it was in 2012. Perhaps he's aware how unambiguously Greengrass has made his disinterest in any more Bourne. In 2024, Greengrass dismissed a request from Prince William himself, remarking, "Not for me, they need somebody younger, I've done my bit. But I hope they get somebody great and young to do it, I think they're in the process."