To promote “Jason Bourne,” slated for release on July 29, actor Matt Damon took part in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session and talked about working again with best friend Ben Affleck and the reason behind his long return to the Bourne franchise.
Although the main reason why he and Affleck have not gotten together to work again is their busy schedules, Damon blames it on Affleck “giving himself the best roles,” which makes his best friend and buddy for 35 years not available in the meantime for doing another script collaboration.
The two wrote the script of “Good Will Hunting” when they were both unemployed and not facing any deadline which is why it took them five years from the time they started to write it until the film was released. Nevertheless, Damon considers it the most influential movie in his life.
“We were just these two idiots in our basement writhing this thing, and now we have all of these pressures of the lives grownups have,” he said.
On the number of years it took Damon to return to the Bourne franchise, the actor explained that even if director Paul Greengrass wanted to do another Bourne movie, the story was not yet available. It took them nine years to make another movie from the franchise “because we didn’t want to force it if it wasn’t there, and so once we realized it was there we all jumped on board,” Damon said.
For the nine-year wait, Damon only has 25 lines of dialogue in the movie, reported CNN. It has led to speculation that he could have earned $1 million per line based on past movie paychecks of the actor. It cited a Forbes story in 2007 that Damon was paid $26 million for “Bourne Ultimatum” and $25 million for “The Martian” shown in 2015, according to Vanity Fair.