Tony Gilroy Says THE BOURNE LEGACY Was an Attempt to Create a Cinematic Universe

Tony Gilroy has been recently spending his time playing in the Star Wars universe with Rogue One and Andor. He’s done such a great job writing for the Star Wars franchise, but before he jumped into that sandbox he worked on the scripts for The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, and The Bourne Legacy. 

That fourth movie was released in 2012, and it starred Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross, who was supposed to take over the franchise after Matt Damon was finished playing Jason Bourne in those first three films. The Bourne Legacy ended up getting mixed reviews, and a few years after it was released Damon jumped back into the franchise for the 2016 movie Jason Bourne. 

Well, when Gilroy wrote The Bourne Legacy, the whole plan for it was to create a Marvel-like cinematic universe but the studio wasn’t interested. He explained:

"Look, man, I tried to give them a Marvel Universe with The Bourne Legacy, and they didn't want to take it. I mean, honestly, that was the whole goal of that, to open it up ... The history of Bourne is one of the most shambolic success stories of all time. That would have been a great Hollywood book if someone had followed it from the very beginning. You'd never get everybody to tell the true story, but it just stumbled toward success all the way through. With Legacy, we really tried to give them, that was my goal, give them a Marvel Universe that they could open up, but there was so much bad blood and other stuff that it just didn't work for them."

He added:

"I mean, what's the trick? The trick is imagination, ambition, and a real – I know it's just a cliche- but a real disrupt, you have to disrupt sh*t like crazy. You have to turn it upside down and say, 'Let's do the opposite.' Always looking, in every scene and every moment, 'What haven't we done before? What's new?' So you gotta be really ambitious and not safe. It's safety that's the enemy of expanding things, I think." 

It actually would’ve been pretty cool to see a Bourne cinematic universe. I’ve enjoyed the franchise over the years and while they don’t make as much money as the Marvel movies, there are a lot of great ways the world of the franchise could have expanded. 

I have no idea if we will see any more Bourne films again, but would you have liked to see it expand into a cinematic universe?