It didn’t come as any surprise to me when word crept out from Universal that the studio has signed Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass to do another Jason Bourne movie. The existing trilogy of Bourne-mania — The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum — have earned $525 million dollars at the box office domestically and have also been loved by movie critics. In fact, it’s likely that the reason Daniel Craig has to thank for his job as the current 007. And there hasn’t been any shortage of suggestions that Jason Bourne could continue to star in more movies, giving Uni its own James Bond-ish spy franchise that could extend for decades. And today comes the proof that the suits in their Black Tower have been thinking of doing just that.
Universal has worked out a deal with the estate of Bourne creator Robert Ludlum that gives the studio the exclusive film rights to the character and first crack at all of the remaining (and future) Bourne novels published. In short, they just locked up Jason Bourne the way that EON Productions has the worldwide rights to James Bond four decades ago.
The former accountant to Robert Ludlum and now serving as the CEO for Ludlum Entertainment, Jeffrey Weiner, will get an office on Universal’s lot where he’ll start to develop some of the other two dozen-and-change Ludlum novels that haven’t been turned into movies. Universal also has another Ludlum book in development as a feature, The Sigma Protocol, but this new deal completely opens the door for the studio to be the de factor place for all future Robert Ludlum movies.
The fourth Bourne movie is being written right now and it’s been inked in for a summer 2010 release. The storyline isn’t known yet but it’s not based on any of the currently published Bourne books, which does make sense to me, as the film series continuity diverted from the book series’ canon back in The Bourne Identity.
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