C0-star: If Damon is game, he could be Bourne again

The third installment of the highly successful movie series inspired by Robert Ludlum’s best-selling "The Bourne Identity" opens Thursday. But don't let the new flick’s title, “The Bourne Ultimatum,” fool you into thinking that's the end of it.

The film’s co-star, Julia Stiles, told TODAY viewers Wednesday that they shouldn’t give up hope for a fourth episode.

“You never know,” she told the TODAY Show’s Matt Lauer and Natalie Morales after mingling with fans on the Plaza at Rockefeller Center. “There is a fourth book. We’ll see.”

The book she refers to is the fourth Bourne novel penned by Ludlum about Jason Bourne, an assassin so thoroughly programmed by the CIA that he doesn’t remember who he is or what was done to him.

In the first movie, “The Bourne Identity,” released in 2002, Bourne (played by Matt Damon), tried to discover who he is. In the second, “The Bourne Supremacy,” which came out two years later, he tries to learn more about his past and is sucked back into the CIA.

The first two movies raked in more than $500 million at box offices around the world. As DVDs, they sold more than 20 million copies.

In “Ultimatum,” Jason Bourne comes with a warning — “I remember everything” — and a mission: to end his personal war no matter what it takes to accomplish that end.

Up to Damon?
Stiles reprises her role as Nicky Parsons, a CIA agent who knows everything about Bourne and has become disillusioned with her job and her employer.

“She’s been around since the beginning, so she knew who Jason Bourne was before he was Jason Bourne, and has seen what the operation has done to him and how it’s beaten him down,” Stiles told Lauer and Morales. “It’s become kind of corrupted, so she wants to get out of the CIA now, which is obviously difficult. It means her life is in danger.”

Like “Wide World of Sports” but with guns and corpses, the movie spans the globe, taking the cast and audience to Moscow, London, Madrid, Paris, Morocco and New York City.

“Morocco, I think, was my favorite, because it’s so great to go there with the film crew and not just as a tourist, and live there for a good amount of time,” Stiles said.

Lauer asked whether it’s harder with every movie to impress Bourne fans, or “does it become easier because there’s a kind of formula you can follow?”

“We definitely tried to not follow a formula in this one,” she said. “But I’m really proud of the movie. I think it’s very entertaining and smart.”

Lauer agreed, saying, “This one grabs your attention from the opening seconds and never lets you go. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a thrill ride.”

But what about Bourne IV? Could that be in the cards?

It could, Stiles said, "if Matt Damon were to agree to do it.”

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