As soon as it was announced that Matt Damon will be returning to the Bourne franchise in the untitled Bourne 5, fans have been wondering what that means for Jeremy Renner's Aaron Cross from The Bourne Legacy. Will that character be simply erased from the fictional world? Will he get another adventure of his own somewhere down the line? Or will he actually get to be a part of an Avengers-style team-up that sees him working with Damon's Jason Bourne? According to producer Frank Marshall, it's mostly Option B, with a chance of Option C.
Marshall - who has been an executive producer on the Bourne franchise since it launched with The Bourne Identity in 2002 - recently sat down for an interview with Collider, and when asked if Jeremy Renner was still going to be a part of the franchise going forward, the filmmaker firmly confirmed that he will be. Where things got tricky, however, was when the of a possible Matt Damon/Jeremy Renner crossover movie came up. According to Marshall, there is nothing currently in the cards, but it isn't entirely an impossibility that Bourne and Cross could one day meet. Asked if there was a chance to the two characters could come together in Bourne 5, he told the site,
"We don't have plans for that. You never know. I never say never. But that's not the plan. They're on separate tracks."
Given how just about everything in Hollywood these days seems to be gearing towards the Marvel-style "shared universe" days - from DC Comics, to Robin Hood, to King Arthur - this is a rather curious answer, if not only because making a Jason Bourne/Aaron Cross team-up movie seems so obvious. Bourne's home, Universal Pictures, has already been working with this kind of strategy, creating a whole new linked series of monster movies, so it's strange that they wouldn't also try the same thing for one of their biggest action franchises. Then again, it's also entirely possible that Frank Marshall is just playing politics here, and merely doesn't want to give anything away about big plans that are being developed behind the scenes.
At this stage, we have no idea when we will be getting our next Aaron Cross-led Bourne movie, but Bourne 5 seems to be right on track. In addition to Matt Damon coming back, Paul Greengrass will once again be at the helm of the project, and filming is scheduled to start later this year. While the film was originally going to come out on July 15, 2016, it has since been pushed back to July 29, 2016. Presumably the next few months will be filled with new details about who in the franchise cast will be returning and who will be signing on for their series debut, so stay tuned.
