Sony Pictures has released the first trailer for Paul Greengrass‘ Captain Phillips.  The movie stars Tom Hanks as real life ship captain Richard Phillips who allowed himself to be taken hostage by Somali pirates in exchange for the safety of his crew.  Judging by the trailer, the adaptation keeps the crew on board, and sets the tone for an action-drama in the vein of Greengrass’ previous film, Green Zone.  Green Zone was a bit of a disappointment, as we saw in Greengrass’ Bloody Sunday and United 93, the director knows how to find powerful drama in true stories.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer along with the promo poster.  Captain Phillips is set to open on October 11th.

Universal Pictures released the Matt Damon-less fourth entry in the Bourne franchise, The Bourne Legacy, earlier this year to a decidedly mediocre response from critics and audiences.  At $275 million it wasn’t in any way a box office bomb, but against a budget of $125 million (not counting marketing), the film wasn’t a runaway success either.  Though Jeremy Renner was a suitable lead and director Tony Gilroy took the series in an interesting direction (CHEMS!), fans have still been eager to see star Matt Damon return to the franchise.

A couple of months ago, Damon went on record saying that it’s unlikely he’ll play the character again since The Bourne Legacy happens in canon and going forward, he and director Paul Greengrass would have to build off of that story instead of creating something all their own.  Now Damon has talked a bit more about the possibility of returning, revealing that he actually enlisted the help of The Dark Knight screenwriter Jonathan Nolan to try to craft a plausible story that would see Bourne return.  Hit the jump to see what he had to say.

Director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum) is set to helm an untitled crime picture written by Chris Terrio (Argo) and starring George Clooney (The Ides of March). Little is known about Terrio’s script other than that it’s an original story that centers on New York crime syndicates. Clooney will also produce with Grant Heslov through their Smoke House banner set up at Sony in a first-look deal. The team previously produced Argo and will once again team with Terrio for his new project and bring in Greengrass as director and producer. Hit the jump for more.

It appears that the Martin Luther King, Jr. drama Memphis isn’t dead after all.  Director Paul Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Supremacy) wrote the script, which takes place during the final days of Dr. King’s life, and previously set the film up as a directorial project early last year alongside producer Scott Rudin (The Social Network, No Country for Old Men), but Universal Pictures abruptly backed out of the pic, forcing Greengrass and Rudin to shelve the project due to a lack of financing.  Now it appears that the film is coming back around with a new backer, with Greengrass hoping to make it his next project.  Hit the jump for more about the film.

When it was first announced that the Bourne franchise would be undergoing a reboot without Matt Damon or the Jason Bourne character, fans wondered whether this meant the end of Damon’s Bourne films.  The actor remained optimistic that he could eventually return to the series one day with director Paul Greengrass, who helmed The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, so everyone remained optimistic that we’d see a proper sequel to Ultimatum someday.  Screenwriter Tony Gilroy took over directing duties for the spin-off of sorts, The Bourne Legacy, setting up a story that overlapped with the events of Ultimatum but focused on a new character played by Jeremy Renner who had an obsessive fixation on chems.

Throughout the development of Legacy, Damon still maintained that he might return to the franchise at some point, and Gilroy made it clear that he hoped to team Damon and Renner up in a future installment.  Well now all of that seems unlikely, as Damon recently revealed that he probably won’t be reprising the Jason Bourne character again.  Hit the jump for more.

Yesterday it looked like Universal’s The Bourne Legacy might get as high as $45 million by the end of its first weekend. That was not to be; although the re-born Bourne did open to a very respectable $40.2 million from 3,745 locations. Also falling in the ‘respectable’ range with $27.4 million was The Campaign, starring Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis. The comedy did well enough from 3,204 locations to keep The Dark Knight Rises in third.

The Bourne franchise is at a crossroads. Does the success of each movie depend on Matt Damon, or can Universal turn Bourne into Bond, an evergreen series that rotates in fresh blood every few movies? To explore that question, I tried to capture how the series has evolved over the last decade with Bourne by the Numbers. The feature provides a numbers-based snapshot of each movie and its place in the filmography by looking at the box office, critical reception, and miscellaneous facts.

Hit the jump for a comprehensive review of the Bourne movies, featuring The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, and The Bourne Legacy.

[With The Bourne Legacy set to open this Friday, we'll be taking a look back at the original Bourne trilogy.  These reviews will contain spoilers since the movies have been out for years.  Click here for my review of The Bourne Identity and click here for my review of The Bourne Supremacy.]

In 2004, the post-9/11 American had begun to take shape and The Bourne Supremacy reflected that change.  It provided a conscious subtext, but the movie remained first and foremost an action-thriller.  But by 2007, the change in our country was no longer worthy of a simple observation.  The change had produced a feeling, and that feeling was anger.  We had been misled into a war, and the government was taking extraordinary powers against Americans in the name of protecting Americans.  The Bourne Ultimatum is unapologetically political, which is its greatest weakness and its greatest strength.  Director Paul Greengrass still delivers a pulse-pounding blockbuster that retains the same intensity of Supremacy, but he pushes audiences to not only recognize the seismic shift in our country, but to confront our complicity in it.

[With The Bourne Legacy set to open this Friday, we'll be taking a look back at the original Bourne trilogy.  These reviews will contain spoilers since the movies have been out for years.  Click here for my review of The Bourne Identity.]

The identity of the Bourne franchise begins in the third act of The Bourne Identity.  It’s when the character’s strengths and weaknesses begin to arise, and The Bourne Supremacy director Paul Greengrass took note of where not only the character was going, but where America was going.  The Bourne Identity came out in June 2002, and the sense of our country’s post-9/11 world was still hazy.  By the time The Bourne Supremacy arrived on July 23, 2004, the reverberations were clear.  We had been led into a war based on faulty intelligence that was cherry-picked so that we could attack a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.  Greengrass wasn’t obligated to insert the subtext into his spy thriller, but he was savvy enough to leave the political commentary simmering underneath an intense action flick that not only boosted Matt Damon‘s credibility as a kick-ass hero, but found a way to use hand-held cinematography to its full effect rather than a lazy shortcut.

Though soccer (or “futbol”) isn’t exactly the most popular sport over here in the States, we all pretend to be huge fans when the World Cup rolls around.  I actually find the sport quite interesting to watch, and now I’m doubly interested seeing as how one of the most talented filmmakers working today is set to tackle the game in a new documentary.  Per 24 Frames, Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum, United 93) will direct a documentary about the legendary FC Barcelona soccer club.

Titled Barca, the film will chronicle the franchise’s preparation for the 2012-2013 campaign.  FC Barcelona is coming off a title win last year, and the film is expected to focus on the club’s successful run over the last four years.  Hit the jump for more.

Sony Pictures will release Paul Greengrass‘ Captain Phillips (previously titled Maersk Alabama) on March 22, 2013.  The movie stars Tom Hanks as real life ship captain Richard Phillips who allowed himself to be taken hostage by Somali pirates in exchange for the safety of his crew.  Phillips’ memoir—A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea—recounts his three days as their captive and his dramatic rescue.  Billy Ray wrote the screenplay, and Scott Rudin, Michael De Luca, Dana Brunetti, and Kevin Spacey (the team behind The Social Network) will produce.  While it seemed like this could have been prime awards bait, the March release date makes Captain Phillips look like steady genre fare along the lines of Greengrass’ Green Zone, which was also based on real events.

Captain Phillips currently shares its March 22, 2013 release date with the DreamWorks Animation movie The Croods featuring the voices of Ryan Reynolds, Emma Stone, and Nicolas Cage.  Hit the jump for a synopsis of A Captain Duty’s.

After crafting a successful sci-fi series for TNT in the form of Falling Skies, writer Joe Weisberg now has a new CIA drama series set up through Imagine TV and 20th Century Fox Television with a talent familiar with espionage coming aboard as executive producer. Deadline has word that The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultiamtum director Paul Greengrass will make his first foray into U.S. television as executive producer of the currently untitled series along with Brian Grazer and Weisberg himself. As of now his deal only has him aboard in the producing capacity, but apparently there’s a chance he might also direct the pilot if his schedule allows.

Plot details are limited, but the series is said to be a high-stakes character-based drama centering on the young assistants of high-ranking officers in the U.S. Intelligence community which includes being inside the walls of the CIA, as well as the DIA, NSA, FBI and other various intelligence components at the White House. Sounds like Fox really needs to fill that void left by the end of 24, and this sounds like it has the potential to bring a real action thriller back to the network. Maybe we could get a little Jack Bauer cameo at some point? I doubt it, but you have to dream every now and then.

Brian De Palma’s Scarface is one of the most entertaining bad movies ever made. Overwrought, overacted (by Al Pacino, Michelle Pfieffer and Robert Loggia, among others), overlong, its indulgences make it the definitive 80′s movie par excellence. I kinda love it. Paul Greengrass’s United 93 dramatizes one of the most traumatic episodes in American history. What do they have in common? Violence, and the fact that Universal has issued both on Blu-ray. Check out our reviews for both on Blu-ray after the jump.

Paul Greengrass needs to get a film going.  Not for him.  He’ll be fine.  For me.  I want to see a new film from him.  He’s been flirting with a variety of projects ever since Green Zone including Fantastic Voyage, Treasure Island, Cleopatra, The Deep Blue Good-By, and Rush.  It looked like the MLK assassination drama Memphis was going to be his next project but Universal got cold feet at the last minute.  From my understanding, it showed Martin Luther King Jr. as a real person instead of saint (I think showing his flaws does the man more credit than trying to gloss over his flaws).  Greengrass was then offered the Somali pirate drama Maersk Alabama starring Tom Hanks but the project seems to have stalled.

Now it looks like he may be circling an adaptation of Robert Harris’ novel The Fear Index.  Harris tells The Telegraph [via The Playlist] that Greengrass is on board to direct the Harris’ script, which is a thriller about an impending meltdown in the financial markets.  Timely!  Hit the jump for a synopsis of the novel and my thoughts on Greengrass potentially taking the gig.

Earlier today Ron Howard seemed pretty optimistic that his Dark Tower adaptation would be coming in at budget and perhaps moving forward in the near future. The director is now throwing all of that optimism into question as Variety reports that he is in early talks to direct the Formula 1 biopic Rush. Written by Frost/Nixon scribe Peter Morgan, Rush focuses on three-time F1 champion Niki Lauda who returned from a fiery crash in 1976 just in time to continue his rivalry with fellow driver James Hunt. Paul Greengrass was interested in heading Rush before taking the helm of Sony’s A Captain’s Duty adaptation.

As for what this means for Howard’s Dark Tower, it’s important to note that the director is still attached to Dark Tower and that his Rush talks are in the very early stages. Given that Dark Tower is a massive undertaking and is moving along slowly/cautiously as a result, it makes sense from a professional standpoint that Howard would dip his toe in other projects while waiting for the go-ahead from Universal. If anything, news of his interest in Rush reaffirms what we already knew: that the Dark Tower series adaptation still has a lot of work to do. That said, if Howard ends up taking on Rush, it should act as evidence that Tower is further away than his recent sentiments may have suggested.