Justin Lin has provided an update on The Bourne Legacy sequel, starring Jeremy Renner. Tony Gilroy had written the first three installments in the Bourne franchise -- The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum -- starring Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, and he was eventually promoted to the director's chair when Paul Greengrass opted not to return for the fourth installment. The first three movies were based on Robert Ludlum's novels of the same name, though the fourth movie slightly deviated from the established characters.

The Bourne Legacy was the franchise's first spin-off movie, and there were hopes that Renner, who played the lead character Aaron Cross, would take over for Damon, who had decided not to return for the fourth movie once Greengrass had departed the franchise. The movie's name was taken from Van Lustbader's The Bourne Legacy -- the first book in the author's continuation novel series -- though its plot and characters were original creations. Although it wasn't nearly as well received as the other movies in the series, it did manage to rake in $276 million globally, thus convincing the studio to pursue another installment.

Fast & Furious director Justin Lin boarded The Bourne Legacy sequel in 2013, with a tentative release date originally scheduled for August 2015. However, the movie has since remained on the back burner -- and it doesn't look like there are any immediate plans to get the project going. Lin recently gave an update on the project to IGN, in which he downplayed hopes that the movie will release anytime soon, despite still being in development.

"I talk to Jeremy all the time and, technically, it's still in-development but look... Jeremy, I'm one of his biggest fans and I think I signed on because we'd been looking for stuff to work together and we still look for stuff to work together. It was just an opportunity at that time. It was actually getting to be really exciting, but I also realized that's a whole other franchise universe, and so to me, my connection to it is through Jeremy, and we're finding some really great things to hopefully work together on."

Star Trek Beyond director Justin Lin

The core idea behind the spin-off was to see how Bourne affected the other operatives involved with the CIA's black ops programs, namely Treadstone and Blackbriar, and Renner's character was their way of doing that. Unfortunately, the actor has since been preoccupied with The Avengers and Mission: Impossible franchises, along with the many other movies he's involved with. Furthermore, Lin had since moved on to direct Star Trek Beyond and is busy developing the upcoming Space Jam sequel.

Although it initially looked like The Bourne Legacy sequel was going to happen, Universal decided to pursue Jason Bourne instead, with Damon reprising his role as the eponymous character and Greengrass returning to direct. The film released last year and, despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, it turned out much more commercially successful than Renner's film. So at the moment it looks like, if anything, Jason Bourne will receive a sequel before The Bourne Legacy does.

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Source: IGN