Last month no less than
14 male actors, some well known, some not so well known, were linked with replacing Matt Damon in Universal's Jason Bourne franchise, in a new thriller titled
The Bourne Legacy that would be based around a new treadstone agent on the run. Today
Deadline have whittled the names down by half as
Joel Edgerton (The Thing),
Dominic Cooper (not named last time),
Garrett Hedlund (Tron Legacy) and
Luke Evans (Tamara Drewe) are set to screen test for the role in the first week of April. Though as Mike Fleming points out, it's not always those who test that ultimately win the gig and he reveals that
Shia LaBeouf is newly added in the mix (though it sounds like he's not interested in screen-testing) and that
Taylor Kitsch has already met with director
Tony Gilroy previously and may be in serious contention. With so many actors who could yet win the role, what have we learnt from this story? Well not an awful lot at this point, except that every man of a certain age in Hollywood wants to take over as the new Bourne (or not Bourne as the case may be), no doubt seeing what the role did for Matt Damon a decade ago. The Bourne Legacy is due to be released in August of next year, with a spring production slated, so Universal cant waste any time finding their leading man. My favourite two names previously were Michael Fassbender and Benjamin Walker haven't made it to the testing stage - and out of those left, I can't imagine me getting excited about seeing any of them in the new movie, unfortunately. All seem out of their depth. I still don't understand why Universal don't just call
Mark Wahlberg and let him take over the Jason Bourne character where Matt Damon left off...