'Bourne' Dethrones Batman At The Box Office

Despite losing series star Matt Damon, the "Bourne" franchise was powerful enough to dethrone three-time champion "The Dark Knight Rises" at the box office. With Jeremy Renner in the lead role, "The Bourne Legacy"took in $40.3 million over the weekend to become the #1 movie in America.
Experts had predicted a win for the fourth entry in Universal's action series, but R-rated comedy "The Campaign" performed slightly better than expected. The political satire pairing Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis debuted at #2 with $27.4 million, pushing "The Dark Knight Rises" a bit further down the box office scorecard than expected. Christopher Nolan's final entry in his Batman trilogy has earned $390.2 million domestically since its release.
The opening weekend for "The Bourne Legacy" was considerably less than the franchise's last entry, "The Bourne Ultimatum," which opened to $69.2 million in 2007. It wasn't as strong as "The Bourne Supremacy" ($52.5 million in 2004), either. But it's worth noting that the series drop-off wasn't too different than that of "Casino Royale," "X-Men: First Class" or this summer's "The Amazing Spider-Man," all of which were considered successful by their respective studios.
The $27.4 million debut of "The Campaign" was only slightly lower than Ferrell's "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" ($28.4 million), and Galifianakis' pairing with Robert Downey, Jr. in "The Hangover" director Todd Phillips' "Due Date" ($32.6 million).
A much different style of comedy, "Hope Springs," took the #4 spot
with its $20.1 million debut. The movie stars Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones as a troubled couple seeking help from therapist Steve Carell.
On the indie front, Spike Lee's "Red Hook Summer" collected $42,100 in four New York City theaters.
This weekend, "The Bourne Legacy" will have to compete for the action audience with the likes of "The Expendables 2," which reunites the who's-who of '80s action movie (writer Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, et al) with some new faces (Liam Hemsworth) and sees beefier roles for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis to face a new villain played by Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Check out everything we've got on "The Bourne Legacy."
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'Bourne Legacy' Director Describes Upcoming Film as 'Ambitious And Unusual'

Don't expect the newest installment of the Bourne series, Bourne Legacy, to be exactly like the previous three.

With Matt Damon no longer playing the main character, Tony Gilroy, director and co-writer of the film, revealed to3m360 News that he's switching things up in order to keep the franchise going. While he described the new direction of the series to be "ambitious and unusual," he still hoped to maintain the preceding storyline.

"One of the things that was really important to me was that anything moving forward not only preserve what happened in the past, but make it better," he said. "There was never anything that was cheesy or cynical about "Bourne." The one thing that was always true was that it had a soulful integrity to it, really embodied by Matt [Damon] in a personal way. You couldn't violate what had happened in the past."

The previous films only play a small role in Bourne Legacy and the world shown in this movie, he says, is much broader. "You thought you were seeing the world, and this movie is telling you that there's a much larger world, a much larger conspiracy beyond this. The events of the other three films are incredibly present, but they're not really in this very much. What happens in Ultimatum is really the spark that's blowing open the door to this movie because the Jason Bourne story is exploding out into the public. Being impossible to conceal any further is causing problems for this much larger conspiracy."

He went on to mention that the latest installment of the movie series has a completely different structure with Jeremy Renner now playing the lead role.

"Jeremy Renner's character has the reverse of amnesia," said Gilroy. "He knows exactly where he's come from. He knows exactly what the stakes are if he doesn't achieve his journey. It's a very different tone, yet it will be very rewarding to people. You should be able to see the movie and not see any of them before. It's been kind of ironic. The people that were having the most trouble getting their heads around the fact that we were doing this are actually the people who I think will ultimately be the most happy about what we're doing. It has a lot of payback for the true fans. "

The Bourne Legacy will hit theaters August 3.