Last December, Producer Frank Marshall said that they were adapting Robert Ludlum's "The Parsifal Mosaic" to work as the fourth entry into the Jason Bourne series.  However, today Variety is reporting that Universal is developing "The Parsifal Mosaic" into its own movie and the fourth Bourne flick will be based off an original idea.  But just so you don't think Universal is going soft and getting into the "original ideas" business, know that they're also adapting Ludlum's "The Sigma Protocol" so ha-ha!

"The Parsifal Mosaic" revolves around a U.S. intelligence agent who thinks he witnesses the execution of his lover, who was identified as a KGB double agent.  He retires, but sees her alive at a train station and attempts to find her and unravel a conspiracy. Soon, the agents become involved in an effort to track down Parsifal, a shadowy figure behind a blackmail scheme.  Of course, if this adaptation is anything like adapting the "Bourne" books, then by the end the movie will just be the title and nothing else. 

As for "The Sigma Protocol", it was Ludlum's last novel and published posthumously.  It's about the son of a Holocaust survivor who gets entangled in an international conspiracy by industrialists and financiers to take advantage of wartime technology.  This is doubly-tragic because if the Holocaust should have taught us anything, it's that you shouldn't get entangled in international conspiracies with financiers to take advantage of wartime technology.  Never forget.