The Bourne Casting Couch

As much as I've been belly-aching about Andrew Garfield being afflicted by "new guy" syndrome, it's not like he's playing Ben Reilly in The Amazing Spider-Man. Whoever takes over for Matt Damon in The Bourne Legacy, on the other hand, won't be Jason Bourne. They'll be some other assassin, possibly on the run we don't know.

The details are scarce except to say its set after The Bourne Ultimatum and Tony Gilroy is in the director's chair this time around. Normally, I'd say not playing Bourne himself, especially following immediately after Damon, was a good thing and would make it easier for the audience to accept him. But this feels like being one of those replacement Duke cousins on The Dukes of Hazard.

The Bourne Legacy, as a film, might work. But I'm hard-pressed to think the general public will be accepting of a movie with Bourne's name in the title, and you can bet money they'll use clips of Damon either in the actual film or its marketing, but no Bourne.

Nevertheless the search is on for the "new guy" and via three outlets (Variety, TOLDJA and What's Playing – in the order that the info got out) are the actors in contention for the unnamed lead *Deep breath*:

• Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood)
• Joel Edgerton (Animal Kingdom and soon to appear in The Thing prequel)
• Luke Evans (Clash of the Titans)
• Michael Fassbender
• Jake Gyllenhaal
• Josh Harnett
• Garrett Hedlund (Tron: Legacy)
• Oscar Isaac (Robin Hood)
• Taylor Kitsch (Battleship and John Carter of Mars – both hitting next year)
• Shia LaBeouf
• Kellan Lutz (Twilight series)
• Tobey Maguire
• Alex Pettyfer (I Am Number Four and Pain-In-The-Ass)
• Michael Pitt (HBO's Boardwalk Empire)
• Benjamin Walker (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter)

This list ranges from names being thrown around the production offices to some who've recently met with Gilroy.

Filming is expected to start this coming spring for an August 2012 release. So a sizeable portion of those guys won't be available and why some of them were even reported given that reasoning, and the fact they're already booked for other gigs, I don't get. Hit-whoring, I guess.

But I'd lean more on the cheaper, lesser-known actors among that group (Evans, Isaac, Lutz and Pitt stick out), assuming others won't be thrown into the mix.