UPDATE: Variety reports that Viggo Mortensen, known for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, has been offered the villainous part of the assassin tracking Bourne, but he hasn’t accepted yet.
ORIGINAL: The currently untitled Bourne 5 was already going to be a series reunion of sorts, with star Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass both returning after having been absent for 2012’s The Bourne Legacy, and now another familiar face has been confirmed. Julia Stiles, who played Nicky Parsons in the first three Bourne movies, has just signed on to reprise her role in Universal’s “Untitled Next Bourne Chapter.”
Parsons, a covert agent, became a close ally of Jason Bourne’s (Damon) over the course of the franchise. Her return begs the question of whether Joan Allen, who also had a pivotal role in The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, will be re-enlisted for what seems like a franchise pivot.
Alicia Vikander, who broke big in this year’s Ex Machina, was recently reported to be eyeing a role in the blockbuster fivequel, but she’s not yet confirmed.
Greengrass is back behind the camera and writing the script with Christopher Rouse, with Frank Marshall back as a producer.
Bourne 5 will not see the return of Bourne Legacy lead Jeremy Renner, whose character was in a similar government program to Damon’s amnesiac assassin. Though the plan at one point was to have the two characters meet up, Legacy didn’t perform as strongly as Universal had expected, leading the studio to wait for Damon and Greengrass to realign so as to draw in the same audiences that made the first three films such big hits.
With Stiles on board, this is definitely shaping up to be more of a fourth Bourne movie, with The Bourne Legacy functioning as a one-off spinoff. With the old crew back together, there’s no reason that the franchise can’t hit the ground running right where it left off in 2007 with Bourne Ultimatum.