Matt Damon talks “post-Snowden world” set Bourne 5

Plot details have been scarce ever since BOURNE 5 was announced, but while promoting his new movie THE MARTIAN, star Matt Damon shed some light on the upcoming film. Damon tells Buzzfeed he feels that the previous films were about the George W. Bush presidency, and that the next entry is set in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations. Snowden, as most of you probably already know, is the former CIA employee and government contractor who leaked classified NSA information in 2013.

We always looked at those movies as really about the Bush presidency, and so we kind of had to wait for the world to change…Without giving too much of it away, it’s Bourne through an austerity-riddled Europe and in a post-Snowden world. It seems like enough has changed, you know? There are all these kinds of arguments about spying and civil liberties and the nature of democracy.

Jason Bourne will once again be jumping around the globe in BOURNE 5, and Damon says his character will be visiting Greece and Las Vegas. What do you think Bourne will be up to in the fifth installment of the franchise?

“We’re starting in Greece, you know, the beginning of democracy,” he said — also a nod to the country’s current financial crisis that is plaguing the greater European economy. “And the movie ends in Las Vegas, the most grotesque incarnation of….” Damon trailed off with a laugh, content to let others fill in whichever institution they’d most prefer to see Jason Bourne dismantle with just his quick wits and fleet fists.

Matt Damon's THE MARTIAN opens on October 2, 2105, while production on BOURNE 5, which also stars Julia Stiles, Tommy Lee Jones and Alicia Vikander, is expected to begin next week for its July 29, 2016 release.