Hollywood Friday: The Bourne Legacy

Aug 09, 2012 16:20pm

Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz play the lead roles in the film.
Action thriller 'The Bourne Legacy' is directed by Tony Gilroy.
Film franchises have seen prequels and sequels but when Matt Damon decided not to return for a fourth stint as rogue CIA agent Jason Bourne, producers opted for something different - the same time-quel.
Renner plays an entirely new character, agent Aaron Cross, whose own on-the-run story takes place concurrently with the events of 2007's 'The Bourne Ultimatum' which starred Damon.
The Bourne series, loosely based on Robert Ludlum's novels, launched in 2002 and the first three movies grossed more than $945 million at the worldwide box office for Universal Pictures and made an action star out of Damon.
Damon played a CIA assassin with memory loss who tries to discover his true identity while evading the CIA, which is out to kill him.
'The Bourne Ultimatum' ended with Bourne evading capture while publicly exposing the CIA programs that trained him.
In the new movie, the man responsible for creating those programs, Colonel Eric Byer (Edward Norton), decides to destroy six genetically enhanced agents - including Cross, a character who does not appear in the Ludlum novels.
The new movie follows Cross' attempts to escape his CIA pursuers while enlisting the help of genetic scientist Marta Shearing, played by Rachel Weisz, for the medications he desperately needs to stay enhanced.
The film is directed by Tony Gilroy, who worked as a screenwriter on the previous three films and co-wrote 'The Bourne Legacy' with his brother Dan Gilroy.