After months of testing seemingly every hot young actor in Hollywood, Jeremy Renner has finally snagged the lead in the new, Matt Damon-less, Bourne-less The Bourne Legacy, taking the lead in the Tony Gilroy-directed spin-off. It’s the second major franchise that’s been handed down to Renner, as speculation persists that his upcoming role in the still-titled-that Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol means he’s being groomed to eventually replace Tom Cruise, once the latter’s ascension into a being of pure light and energy is complete.
While that’s officially still just a rumor, it definitely seems as though Renner is being set up to carry a whole new batch of Bourne films, even if they should probably be called something else eventually: He’ll play “an operative from a covert government program that is even more dangerous than the Treadstone brainwashing program that hatched Bourne”—and why would we ever return to following Bourne around knowing there’s someone out there doing stuff that’s even more dangerous? Anyway, between this, M:I4, and playing Hawkeye in The Avengers, it seems like nary a blockbuster action franchise will go forth in the next few years without some ration of Renner.