Deadline has reported that The Town star Jeremy Renner has been offered the lead role in the new Bourne film, The Bourne Legacy. Despite earlier reports that Joel Edgerton may snag the prize, it is now confirmed that Universal has decided to go with Renner. The actor had been in serious talks a few weeks back but it wasn’t final until now.
The film starts a new spinoff franchise from the first three films that Matt Damon starred in. The Bourne Legacy will be written and directed by Tony Gilroy, who was the screenwriter for the original Bourne films. Renner will play “an operative from a covert government program that is even more dangerous than the Treadstone brainwashing program that hatched Bourne.”
Renner has been a much sought after actor in the past few years after his Oscar nominations for The Hurt Locker and The Town. He can be seen next in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol alongside Tom Cruise and Paula Patton.
The Bourne trilogy has made over $945,000,000 worldwide total, which makes it easy to see why Universal Pictures wants to try and keep the franchise alive, even without Damon and director Paul Greengrass. The film is still in the early development stages, and with no release date in the foreseeable future, don’t expect to see The Bourne Legacy until at least 2013.