Frank Marshall: Sixth Jason Bourne film likely, no plans for Bourne Legacy sequel (exclusive)

The Bourne franchise is alive and kicking after ‘Jason Bourne’ – the first Matt Damon-starring entry in the series since 2007’s ‘Bourne Ultimatum’ – raked in £332 million ($415m) at the global box office.

Speaking to Yahoo Movies to promote with the film’s DVD and Blu-ray release (out now), series producer Frank Marshall told us the franchise is taking a break but a sixth film is currently in development, and it may address the character facing up the ageing process.

Fans waiting for a follow up to ‘Bourne Legacy’ starring Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross though will be disappointed to learn that that story arc is currently dead in the water.

Here’s everything we learned from Frank Marshall about the future of the Bourne franchise.

Yahoo Movies: Have you spoken with Paul Greengrass [director of ‘Jason Bourne’] and Matt Damon since the film was released? Is there any interest in making any more Bourne movies?

Frank Marshall: I have spoken to them both. Obviously they’re very pleased with how the movie turned out. It’s really about the story, just like on this one, everyone said ‘if you come to us with a good story, we’ll think about it.’

So right now, we’re taking a pause and then we’re going to dive back in and try to find a story. We did leave it wide open at the end of the movie to continue on in Bourne’s world so we’ll see what we can come up with.

Is there a risk that your leading man might become too old in the future for more Bourne films?

I think it’s an ongoing thing. Obviously you have to have a story that fits the actor so if we go on who knows where he’s going to go? He’s not always going to be the Jason Bourne that he was 15 years ago, but there are a lot of other things he could be doing in that world, so I think that’s what’s going to be exciting for us to try and explore.

Could we see the Tony Gilroy [writer-director of ‘Bourne Legacy’] Jeremy Renner branch of the Bourne story being revived in the future?

Probably not. I don’t know. That story is still out there as well but it’s not… we’re not talking about it.

Is there any truth in the story that Tony Gilroy delivered an “unworkable” script on ‘Bourne Ultimatum’ and that’s why he doesn’t work on the main Bourne films any more?

Tony was really the keeper of the flame of the Bourne movies. He wrote some great movies. People move on, you know? And I think that’s just the case here. We just looked for a different story and a different writer, but I think ‘Bourne Ultimatum’ was another really good movie and it certainly closed out the trilogy in a great way.

‘Ultimatum’ is undoubtedly a great movie.

It is. And although I do love ‘Supremacy’, I think ‘Ultimatum’ is probably my favourite too.

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This is the fifth Jason Bourne film you’ve produced – was it the hardest to get off the ground?

Well, I think it was because we didn’t have a title, we didn’t know where we were going to go with it, and until we had a really solid idea were weren’t going to proceed.

It was great to have the band back together – Paul [Greengrass, the director], and Matt [Damon] and Chris Rouse [the screenwriter], and I – and to find that story that we all wanted to tell.

It did really well commercially but wasn’t such a big hit with the critics, why do you think that was?

I don’t know. I think we had… maybe they wanted a different story, I don’t know, but I think we made a really wonderful movie and it has all the elements that Jason Bourne movies should have and I was quite pleased with the results.

You can’t please everybody all the time.

What was the most difficult part of the shoot for you?

I think I’d have to say the Las Vegas section was a real challenge for us because one of the elements of Bourne movies is that we’re in the real places and we try not to rely on CG very much, so we really took over Las Vegas and the strip which I don’t think any other movies have really done before.

So we were in all these locations and we actually shut down the strip for several nights and had two units working 24 hours a day, so to keep that all together was a real challenge.

What will fans of Jason Bourne get new from the home entertainment release?

The obvious ones are the behind the scenes discussions about how we actually made the movie. I think the chase on the Las Vegas strip is pretty amazing in how it got set up and the details of that.

There’s some good character things and Paul Greengrass explaining the world we’re in. I think there’s some really good extras and I always think that’s an interesting thing to watch.

‘Jason Bourne’ is available on Blu-ray and DVD now courtesy of Universal Pictures (UK).

Join us later for more of our Frank Marshall interview for updates on ‘Indiana Jones 5′, ‘Jurassic World 2’, and ‘Back To The Future’…

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