Prince William Asked Bourne Director Paul Greengrass to ‘Please’ Make Another Jason Bourne Movie; He Laughed It Off: ‘They Need Somebody Younger’
Prince William and filmmaker Paul Greengrass came face to face at a recent event hosted by BAFTA and the Royal African Society, and it appears the Prince of Wales is a big fan of the director’s work in the Jason Bourne franchise. Greengrass has directed three Bourne movies starring Matt Damon: “The Bourne Supremacy” (2004), “The Bourne Ultimatum” (2007) and “Jason Bourne” (2016).
According to a report from The Times UK, Williams approached Greengrass at the event and pleaded for him to direct a fourth Bourne movie. “Another Bourne, please?” the Prince of Wales asked, but Greengrass “laughed and shook his head.”
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“Not for me, they need somebody younger, I’ve done my bit,” Greengrass later said (via The Independent). “But I hope they get somebody great and young to do it, I think they’re in the process.”
Prince William has been the president of BAFTA since February 2010. The event in which Greengrass attended was a meeting with this year’s recipients of the Prince William BAFTA Bursary fund, which provides grants of up to $2,600 to help young people from underrepresented groups develop their careers in entertainment.
While Greengrass has no intentions of directing a fourth Bourne movie, the franchise is currently developing a new movie at Universal Pictures. This would be the sixth film in the franchise. News broke last November that Universal was developing a sequel with “All Quiet on the Western Front” director Edward Berger. The Bourne series, which includes four films headlined by Damon and one by Jeremy Renner, has earned $1.6 billion worldwide. Damon expressed interest in returning earlier this year.
“There is a great director named Edward Berger,” Damon said during an interview on “The Late Show.” “[‘All Quiet on the Western Front’] is a fantastic film, and he’s wonderful and he said he had an idea [for Bourne]. I would love to work with him, so he’s working on it. Look, I’m as anxious as you are to see if this thing [happens] — I hope it’s great and that we can do it.”
“At a certain point somebody is going to need to take it over,” Damon added about the franchise. “I’m not getting any younger.”
Sources familiar with the new Bourne movie stressed to Variety last November that the film was in early development and any return to Bourne would be far into the future. There was no script written at the time, nor a screenwriter even attached to the movie.
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