First Look: Jeremy Renner in THE BOURNE LEGACY
Renner cuts a determined gaze as Aaron Cross in the franchise spin-off from the Jason Bourne character.
If you hadn't guessed it by now, 2012 is going to be the year Jeremy Renner becomes the biggest new action star in Hollywood. We've just seen him take his considerable dramatic chops to Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (although with a slightly smaller role than what we were expecting and no sign of him replacing Tom Cruise in the next one), in March he will appear in the fantasy re-telling Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters before bringing some bad-ass moves to The Avengers in May. To top it all off, in August he gets the solo leading man stint in the franchise spin-off The Bourne Legacy. Universal have just released the first official look at his leading character Aaron Cross from the latter film via a 2012 movies preview guide in USA Today. Renner's Cross replaces Jason Bourne (there's no Matt Damon or the character in this one) in the fourth film in the franchise that heralds a brand new direction. Of course Aaron Cross won't be his real name... and it's the mystery of who he is and how he got there that will likely be our journey. The Bourne Legacy picks up at the collapse of black-ops program Treadstone, leading to a more dangerous department emerging. That's just about all the info we have and Universal are banking on the familiar faces of Joan Allen and Albert Finney, along with probable mentions of Jason Bourne to ease us in with new faces - Oscar-winner Rachel Weisz, Oscar-nominee Edward Norton as the main villain and Oscar Isaac the brainwashed, anonymously named assassin Number 3, fleshing out the cast. Tony Gilroy, the cerebral writer/director of Michael Clayton & Duplicity and who has had a hand in writing all the Bourne movies to date, is the man with the envious task of taking over from Paul Greengrass who had directed the last two movies. But Gilroy is no mug and he has been itching to tell these tales the way he wants to... so it will be fascinating to see how much these films differ to the previous trilogy when The Bourne Legacy opens August 3rd, 2012. Meanwhile, there are reports that Renner is perhaps taking his role as Aaron Cross a bit too seriously. Out in Thailand where the film is still shooting, Renner has been accused of leaving one one man wounded in hospital with knife wounds after being involved in a six man brawl at a bar. Renner himself walked away without a scratch! video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player