It's a difficult task to create a sequel worthy of a critically beloved first film; to make a third film in a series that also measures up is a major studio's Holy Grail. That's a prize Frank Marshall, who produced the Indiana Jones films, knows well, and a task he helped pull off with 2007's The Bourne Ultimatum (which earned the strongest reviews of all).
Stretching the feat to a successful fourth film proved a bit more difficult.
By now, the story is well-known: series star Matt Damon, uncertain about the franchise's future, disliked series scripter Tony Gilroy's first script, and refused to return without director Paul Greengrass. That left Marshall and his co-producer Frank Crowley in a lurch, and turning back to Gilroy. Eventually, it would result in a sort of spinoff, starring Jeremy Renner as another agent in the brain-controlling secret agent program, but with a twist: unlike Bourne, he had no amnesia, or questionable morals.
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The film takes place during the events of the second and third Bourne films, and while those events are the catalyst for this story, it's an adventure all its own, with a brand new and compelling protagonist in Renner's Aaron Cross. After starring in Avengers and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, the man knows how to handle weapons, and hand-to-hand combat. Rachel Weisz stars as a doctor from the program on the run, while Edward Norton is introduced as the mastermind behind it all.
The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Marshall and his co-producer, Jonathan Crowley, at the New York premiere of The Bourne Legacy about their quasi-reboot/sequel -- and how, according to Marshall, there is unlikely to be a fifth Indiana Jones film.
THR: Five years after, you decided to do a fourth film?
Marshall: We decided to do a fourth film like, two weeks after the third one, but it’s taken us five years to do that.
THR: You had planned to do it with Matt; once that didn’t happen, was there ever the thought of not going forward?
Marshall: No, I think we were always looking for a story idea, and that’s when Tony came up with this idea of how to sort of expand the world, and it fit into everything... we don’t give up easy.
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THR: Now, it’s like the series is reborn; you could do three or four more now.
Marshall: Yeah, in some ways, what is this? A sequel? A reboot? I don’t know what it is -- sort of a same-timer. It expands the world of the last movie, so you’re seeing what Jason Bourne’s effect is having on the world that he lives in, and has on these other programs. Now, it’s wide open. All possibilities could happen.
THR: This is an entire originally scenario.
Marshall: Well, we’ve been very good partners with the Robert Ludlum estate, and we haven’t been on book since the first movie. We took that idea of the agent waking up in the water, and since it was a Cold War kind of story, we’ve been on our own since the first movie, so this fit right in to everything.
Crowley: The first one, Carlos the Jackal is in there, there’s a lot of stuff we couldn’t ever fit into Bourne Identity. The second one took place in red China, we weren’t really that interested in it, and we never read the third one.
THR: What is the threshold for success for this movie, since it’s a reboot/sequel. How do you judge it as a success?
Marshall: Well, you hope people to go see it. You judge a success by -- I feel, we’ve been very successful in creating a new platform to go forward on. That’s what’s exciting about the movie. It also creates a complete world, with a lot of new characters and a lot of new programs, and we can go any way we want. And, I think it fits into the Bourne box. It is a Bourne movie.
Crowley: I think there’s a certain energy to the Bourne movies, and there’s a certain level of complexity at which people, they don’t see it once, they see it twice, because they don’t get it all, and they buy the DVD. When Bourne Ultimatum came out, DVD sales had started to taper off, Bourne Ultimatum DVDs still stayed straight, because people needed to try and figure out everything that was going on. And having Tony Gilroy involved in the fourth one made that same multi-layered approach.
Marshall: It’s a very complicated movie. We ask a lot of the audience. It’s all there if you’re paying attention -- that’s what’s cool about it.
THR: What made Jeremy Renner the right choice for the role?
Marshall: Jeremy is the consummate actor, and he’s an action lead, and it’s kind of unexpected because he has this intelligence about him. That’s what we needed; we needed a smart agent that you could believe could do all this physical stuff, but also was smart.
Crowley: And also a guy who the audience hasn’t completed their idea of what Jeremy Renner is.
Marshall: He’s still undeveloped, a little bit like Matt was when we started with Matt. People don’t quite know who he is yet. So we’re getting to take advantage of that.
THR: Is there going to be a fifth Indiana Jones movie?
Marshall: No. Not yet. Never say never, but, you know, not yet.
Email: Jordan.Zakarin@THR.com; Twitter: @JordanZakarin
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