Matt Damon has signaled fresh willingness to return to the Jason Bourne franchise, telling Parade magazine this week that he and his collaborators have never stopped trying to crack the story that would bring the amnesiac CIA assassin back to theaters — and, in a self-deprecating flourish, inviting readers to pitch ideas themselves.
“We’re always looking to try to get another one of those because we loved it, everyone who worked on them,” Damon said. “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.”
The comments land ten years after Jason Bourne (2016), the fifth film in the series and the last to feature Damon, who skipped the franchise’s fourth entry, The Bourne Legacy (2012), when Jeremy Renner stepped in as a different character. The five Damon-led films, built from Robert Ludlum’s novels, collectively grossed more than $1.64 billion worldwide and are credited with reshaping the modern action thriller in the early 2000s.
The appetite to revive the series has never been the problem. In late 2023, it emerged that Edward Berger — the Swiss-Austrian director behind the Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front — had been developing a new Bourne film at Universal, with Damon’s involvement unconfirmed and no script yet written.
That project never moved forward. Then, in March 2025, Universal lost the rights to the franchise entirely. NBCUniversal reacquired full rights to both the Jason Bourne and Treadstone book series in August 2025, resetting the table for new development.
Damon’s latest comments represent his most publicly enthusiastic endorsement of a return in years, and come as he promotes Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, due July 17. His longtime collaborator Paul Greengrass, who directed the second, third, and fifth films, has previously suggested a younger filmmaker should eventually take the wheel — a position that appears to have freed Damon from treating the two careers as a package deal.
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Whether the enthusiasm translates into a sixth film remains to be seen, as the franchise’s development history since 2016 has been one of recurring interest followed by collapse.
