--- title: Interview: Bourne Director Tony Gilroy on Why 'Legacy' Is the Ultimate Conspiracy Movie description: Director Tony Gilroy has been linked to the Bourne franchise since its inception — he wrote the screenplays for the first three movies featuring Matt... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7121621/bourne-director-tony-gilroy-on-why-legacy-is-the/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2012-08-08T12:00:51.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-16T06:03:14.247Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Bourne Director Tony Gilroy on Why Legacy Is the Ultimate Conspiracy Movie og:description: Gilroy talked to TIME about the movie he had to make, the Bourne mythology and crazy CIA operation names that didn't make the cut og:url: https://time.com/archive/7121621/bourne-director-tony-gilroy-on-why-legacy-is-the/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt758475119b6fe0a5/698a8fc316d884ac38c445a3/ap120716011859.jpg?branch=production&width=600&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 600 og:image:height: 338 og:image:alt: Italy The Bourne Legacy Movie og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Bourne Director Tony Gilroy on Why Legacy Is the Ultimate Conspiracy Movie twitter:description: Gilroy talked to TIME about the movie he had to make, the Bourne mythology and crazy CIA operation names that didn't make the cut twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt758475119b6fe0a5/698a8fc316d884ac38c445a3/ap120716011859.jpg?branch=production&width=600&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # Director Tony Gilroy on the 'Epic' Bourne Legacy > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Aug 8, 2012 12:00 PM UTC  Director Tony Gilroy poses during a photo call to present the movie "The Bourne Legacy", in Rome, Monday, July 16, 2012\. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) Director Tony Gilroy poses during a photo call to present the movie "The Bourne Legacy", in Rome, Monday, July 16, 2012\. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)AP—AP2012 by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Aug 8, 2012 12:00 PM UTC Director Tony Gilroy has been linked to the _Bourne_ franchise since its inception — he wrote the screenplays for the first three movies featuring Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. After the billion-dollar trilogy ended five years ago, Gilroy was busy directing his first film, _Michael Clayton_, which earned seven Oscar nomination. He was long past _Bourne_ when producers came calling in 2010\. After all, the franchise had already been through two directors (Doug Limon and Paul Greengrass). But what started as a simple ‘what if?” conversation soon became _The Bourne Legacy_ — a spin-off years in the making. Gilroy phoned TIME to talk about the movie he was compelled to make, the _Bourne_ mythology and crazy CIA operation names that didn’t make the cut. **TIME: Why did you sign on to do another** **_Bourne_** **film?** Tony Gilroy: I really backed into this in such a weird way. I never had any intention of ever coming back to this realm at all—much less write it, much less direct it. Then I started a really casual conversation about what we could do in a post-Jason Bourne setting. I was only supposed to come in for two weeks, but the character we came up with, Aaron Cross, was so compelling. **Rumor has it you hadn’t even seen** **_The Bourne Ultimatum_** **until you were in talks for a fourth film.** It’s true. After the initial conversation with producers, I said, ‘I’ll go look at _Ultimatum_, and if there’s anything that occurs to me, I’ll get back to you.’ And I watched it, then I called my brother Dan. I said, ‘The only thing you could do is sort of pull back the curtain and say there’s a much bigger conspiracy.’ So we had to deal with what happened in _Ultimatum_ as the starting point of this film. _Ultimatum_ plays in the shadows of _Legacy_ for the first 15 minutes — they overlap. **Were you always set on Jeremy Renner as your lead?** No, Jeremy was not available to us originally. We were casting for some months, and he was never on any of our available lists. He was off-limits. And then, far through the process, when we were getting right up to the moment of desperation, all of a sudden, _Avengers_ pulled their schedule together and all of a sudden he was free. And that’s when \[producer\] Frank Marshall and I went over to Germany to talk to him right away. (**MORE:** [9 Spy Secrets Jason Bourne Could Teach Legacy’s Aaron Cross](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/08/07/9-spy-secrets-jason-bourne-could-teach-legacys-aaron-cross/#its-okay-to-bounce-off-cars)) **How would you compare Aaron Cross to Jason Bourne? Cross doesn’t have amnesia. He’s not an assassin. There’s chemical enhancement at play…** Obviously everybody in all these government programs can kick ass. But the new Outcome agents are required to have a pretty high level of social engineering. I mean, they’re very nimble. They have really quick minds—curious, the ability to blend in and to adapt. They have some very different problems. Jason Bourne’s problem—whether it’s from a side effect from the training or traumatic experiences—he has amnesia. He has no idea who he is. He just always searches for his identity. Aaron Cross knows exactly who he is and he knows exactly where he came from, and he tries very hard to maintain that identity. **How did the production of Legacy compare with making the first three films?** In terms of how far we go and where we go and the way we go, our film is more epic. It’s a wider canvas. We have a lot more production design in this film than in the previous films. The scope is so much larger. We shot in Korea, New York, Canada, Manila. You see how many credits there are at the end of the movie—it’s like a six-and-a-half minute crawl of all the people involved. It’s astonishing. (**READ:** Richard Corliss on [_The Bourne Ultimatum_](http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1649187,00.html)[ as macho fantasy](http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1649187,00.html)) **When looking back at the other** **_Bourne_** **movies—did you take anything from Ludlum or Greengrass? For the first few seconds of the movie there’s some shaky camera action** **—a Greengrass signature.** We were very rigorous in figuring out what had been done before. We were students of the previous films, but we knew we were doing a larger movie with this bigger landscape and this concept of pulling back the curtain on the _Bourne_ mythology. We have a slightly different visual vocabulary, but there’s a lot of places where we really had to kick ass. We really had to move to get it to look the way we wanted. **How did you come up with the name of the CIA operations? First there was Treadstone, then Blackbriar.** **_The Bourne Legacy_** **features Operation Outcome…** I spend a lot of time in a sort of free state when I’m writing in the beginning and sketching. When you’re in that phase you try to make sure you’re at your desk long enough—whether it’s a couple of days or the week or the month. So when you’re really swinging and really going loose, stuff really comes quickly. I probably have a hundred pages of notes of all kinds of things that didn’t make it in here and all kinds of lists of names and programs. Some of them became side programs in _Legacy_: Emerald Lake and Larx are in there. (**READ:** [How the Bourne Boys Keep It Rea](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1649298,00.html)l) **What’s next for the** **_Bourne_** **franchise?** I spent two years making _Legacy_. All I know is I need a vacation. I want to take a break and rest my eyes, and see what it is I want to be doing when I get back. But the franchise could go on indefinitely. I mean hopefully in a non-greedy way. We didn’t wanna be asking you to buy another ticket on the way out of the theater. 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