Things have not been going well with the production of the fourth film in the Bourne franchise.
First off, there’s the problem of the script. According to star Matt Damon, the film has a story but no script. This is kind of right, but it’s more accurate to say that the film has no agreed upon script.
Instead, Bourne 4 (working title) currently has two scripts. The first was written by George Nolfi, who co-wrote Bourne Ultimatum, and the second was written by Josh Zetumer, who was brought on to write “a parallel script.”
As if this weren’t enough of a deterrent, nobody mentioned to director Paul Greengrass that a second writer was being brought on. Add on to this that Universal Pictures, the studio behind Bourne, is not too happy with Greengrass’s work on another film with them, and you’ve got a rather sticky situation.
Green Zone, the other film Greengrass is working on, which also stars Damon, was meant to be a small film to basically give Greengrass something to do between Bourne movies. Well, somehow Greengrass managed to push production costs to $150 million, and has spent months re-shooting and editing Green Zone.
Obviously, the studio doesn’t like how much money they’ve had to put into Green Zone, but they also don’t want to see Greengrass bring his “let the story grow during production” style to the high-profile Bourne franchise.
Needless to say, Universal and Greengrass are having about the epitome of creative differences. Due to this, Greengrass has walked from Bourne 4. It’s possible that Greengrass and Universal could reconcile differences, but if not we could see three potential outcomes: 1. The film doesn’t get made at all; 2. The film gets made with Damon but not Greengrass; or 3. Damon, who has a strong actor-director loyalty with Greengrass, walks too and the film is made without him.
Only time will tell if the director and studio can work things out, so for now we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed that things still go forward.
