We literally were just talking about the fate of this one at the water cooler this morning. For most tentpoles, on average, you don’t want less than a year from shooting to release. Smart studios try to add in a year and a half for safety , some studios like 20th Century Fox tend to rush things (see “X-Men: The Last Stand,” and “X-Men: First Class”) and some studios just wisely push off the date when they’re not ready. Marvel’s “Ant-Man” was recently cutting it close which is why they were in full-speed mode to find a new director to shoot this summer and have the film meet their target release date of summer 2015. Had they not found Peyton Reed as a director, or any replacement, that movie surely would have been pushed to 2016.
So ‘Bourne 5,’ originally scheduled for summer 2015, had no production start date in sight, and I was just thinking we’re going to hear an update sooner rather than later any minute now. And yep, they’re not ready. Universal just announced that the Untitled Next Bourne Chapter aka “Bourne 5” will not be coming out summer 2015. Instead, they’ve moved the date from August 14, 2015, to a more peak July 15, 2016. Why?
Well, it’s clear they weren’t ready or happy with the next film at the screenplay level. How so? Well, they just hired Andrew Baldwin (the man behind the “Logan’s Run” remake that Nicolas Winding Refn almost made) to rewrite the film. Meaning they were probably a little unhappy with the draft that Anthony Peckham (“Sherlock Holmes 2”) wrote. Instead, they’re going to hopefully get it right and have booked in an extra year’s time to do so. Sure, the momentum will be off pace—“The Bourne Legacy” came out in 2012, that’s four years later—but better to have a tentpole that audiences like than one just rushed out the door. Considering audiences were pretty cool on ‘Legacy’ as it was (middling box-office as far as the series goes), it’s probably not a bad move to really nail this one and get the franchise back to flagship status.
Justin Lin (“Fast & Furious” series) will direct the fifth installment, Jeremy Renner returns as Aaron Cross for this chapter and Frank Marshall will once again produce. Speculate in the space below about the studio having an extra year to convince Matt Damon to return (good luck with that).