‘The Odyssey’ Star Matt Damon Is 100% Up for More ‘Bourne’ &’Oceans’ Sequels

Jason Bourne is not retired. He is stuck in development, which is a different thing entirely.

Matt Damon told Rich he is still in the idea of playing the character, and the work is already underway. He is talking with Edward Berger, the director of All Quiet on the Western Front, whom Damon called a wonderful director. What they do not have yet is the story.

"I'd love to do it," Damon said. "It's just that thing where if we do it, we want it to be like the first three."

The obstacle is structural, and Damon explained it better than most franchise post-mortems do. Bourne is not built like James Bond, where every movie is its own mission and you can even swap out the person playing the lead. Bourne is a linear story.

"So, it makes it more challenging to do a sequel where you're giving people what they want, but also enough new stuff," Damon said. "It's a tricky one."

Rich came at it from the other side of the screen. He recently started watching the trilogy again with his younger kids, and his review was unqualified. As good as ever. Phenomenal. Great movies that are fun and still translate to the current day.

His pitch for the next one was simple: years later, Bourne is still not out of it, and the past is still catching up.

Damon's response was to invite him into the writers' room, which Rich immediately declined on the grounds that you should not say things you do not want to actually happen. Then Damon offered the closest thing to real news in the conversation.

"I think we have a line of sight on how to do it," he said. "I will report back."

The Ocean's question got a similar answer with fewer moving parts. Is another one in the mix? "There might be another Ocean's movie in the mix." Damon said everybody's schedules have to line up, and everything has to be right, and he thinks they are probably close on that one.

"That would be a lot of fun, too. I mean, obviously I love those guys."

Rich has asked this before, and he pointed out that Casey Affleck and Andy Garcia both gave him nearly identical answers when they sat in the same chair. Damon confirmed the pattern without much resistance. "Everybody kind of just hovers around and we're all in kind of a holding pattern." Ready to go. Ready to unite if it works.

Whether those shoots count as a working vacation was where Damon drew a soft line. He would not even put the word work in it, then course corrected. "We all take our jobs seriously, but George is great and he's a lot of fun."

The best part of the segment was the memory Rich fished out of him about Carl Reiner. The cast was staying at the Bellagio while shooting there, and someone got the group 11 tickets to O. They all went down one night, watched the show, and gathered in the lobby afterward.

Reiner looked at everyone and delivered his review of the entire evening.

"We're all overpaid."