Now playing is writer/director Tony Gilroyâs The Bourne Legacy. For those unfamiliar with the franchise reboot, this time around, a government task force led by Edward Nortonâs character is assassinating all their genetically-modified assets to prevent another Bourne situation. However, one member of the program, Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), manages to escape with a scientist (Rachel Weisz), and the two go on the run for their lives. The film also stars Oscar Isaac, Joan Allen, David Strathairn, Albert Finney, Stacy Keach, Scott Glenn, Corey Stoll, and Donna Murphy. For more on the film, here are five clips and all our previous coverage.During the recent Los Angeles press day, I did an exclusive interview with Tony Gilroy. During our extended conversation we talked about the making of Bourne Legacy, sequels, his writing process, creating new and exciting action scenes, IMAX, 3D, deleted scenes, what will be on the Blu-ray, whether the next sequel would still have "Bourne" in the title, if he has scripts ready to shoot, and a lot more. Hit the jump for what he had to say.Collider: I know youâve been doing a lot of press over the last few daysâ¦TONY GILROY: I have been doing a lot of press over the last ten days, yes.Is it a process that you enjoy? Some directors want to let the movie speak for itself, but at the same time, you have to promote.GILROY: Yes, to that. Yes. Would I prefer to do less of it? Yeah. Some of itâs fun. When itâs switched on and smart, itâs engaging. And sometimes itâs like being in a dairy farm. If you did it all the time, I think it would be a grind. Iâve only done itâ¦this is the third time Iâve done it. Itâs still vaguely a novelty. Jumping into why I actually get to talk to you today, one of the things that I learned by talking to producers Frank Marshall and Ben Smith, is that this film, this Bourne wasâ¦you could say a little bit different than the making of the third film, which was a little bit more chaotic and nerve-wracking. I heard this one went very smoothly.GILROY: I wasnât involvedâ¦my involvement with Ultimatum really ended when I turned in the script and went to work on Michael Clayton, so I couldnât have been more outside the stadium when they were making that. I worked for a lot of directors. I had a big advantage, I worked for a lot of different directors over almost thirty years as a writer, 25 years as a writer. So, I got to see a lot of directors over the years and work on a lot of shows and I did a lot of production work. I knew what I liked. I like things to be really organized and I like things to be really rational and I knewâ¦if youâre the writer, in some way youâre a department head and I knew what made me work best and I like to run a really happy organized show. So I canât speak to how anybody else does it. Obviously Universal has had great success with the Bourne franchise and theyâre hoping that Jeremy Renner can take the mantle and turn this into a new franchise obviously with Renner leading the way. When youâre writing this, knowing that Universalâs clearly hoping to reboot the franchise in a new direction, did you come up with a bible in terms of where it can go from now on? How much are you laying out to make sure that you still had story, if you will, for when Universal might want to do another?GILROY: The bible was really much more in the beginning and it was really building the mythology of this larger conspiracy and the mythology of the origin story of this entire franchise. Weâre really saying that Edward Norton has been there for the whole 13 years and sitting beside you in the theater watching this all go on. A lot of the work that would let you go forward was done then, so itâs more like tending the whole landscape at first. We wanted to be in the position whereâ¦look, it was extremely important to me, when I came on, I didnât come on until the rules were that Matt [Damon] was gone, Matt and Paul [Greengrass] were gone, there was no Jason Bourne. That was the given when I had the first conversation about this. So it was very important to me, extremely important to me, that everything that had happened before be well preserved and be enhanced if possible by what weâre doing now. I think weâre in a good place where we can go in a whole bunch of different directions, and hopefully not in a way where youâre cheesily asking the audience for another ticket on the way out as the movieâs over. Iâve seen some movies that do that and itâs sort of irritating. We donât to be that, but we want to leave ourselves in a good position to have a whole variety of ways of going forward.Iâm curious about your writing process. Some writers I speak to, they punch a clock like 9-to-5, and others talk about a âgolden time,â when they first wake up, they put in a good four hours and then they need to stop. How are you as a writer?GILROY: I used to be, when I was young, I used to be extremely regular and very organized. I think what Iâve recognized over the years is that Iâm very, very bingey, extremely bingey when it comes to writing. But thereâs no way of calculating when those binges are going to arrive, so thereâs a huge amount of âass in chairâ thatâs wasted time, but I reallyâ¦what I donât do is, if I get on a run, if I get hot, I play the hot hand. Itâs sort of like gambling; if things are running right, I donât want to let go. I spend a lot of time wasting time waiting for something to happen or making itâ¦[laughs] itâs more painful not to write than it is to write. Itâs kind of a mixed bag. But what I didnât recognize when I was much younger was this sort ofâ¦when youâre on, when youâre really on, go at it. The Bourne franchise is known for action set pieces and great intimate action scenes. Iâm curious about the challenge of coming up with new action set pieces that have not been done and new ways of filming it, new ways of showing it. Was that daunting to you or was that sort of exciting?GILROY: No, itâs exciting. But it starts with exactly that, if you say what you just said to me, to yourself, and thatâs your starting point, and then you say, âOkay, well I know thatâs what we want to do. Hereâs where the barâs been set. We know what everybody else has done, not only in the previous three films, but everybody in the marketplace has done.â Iâve only seen, you know, 50,000 movies, so you start with that as your North Star that youâre going to navigate towards. For me, what works is, I go to real places. You go to Manila and walk around for ten days and see whatâs there and you go, âWow!â You go back to your hotel and you write it up and you think about it and you have a drink and you go back the next day and you look around. Itâs like being six years old; you want to make it fun. The invention of it needs to be fun. It loses all of its fun in the middle, but the inception of it and hopefully the end result are fun; everything in the middle is a big pain in the ass. But you gotta get really excited and just start by thinking, âWhatâs fresh?âIâm a huge fan of the IMAX format; not so much 3D. Did you ever have any thought to filming anything in IMAX? Or is that something that maybe youâd think about in the future for a Bourne film or another project that youâre involved with?GILROY: Because of the sort of fabric of these, the integrity was really kind of baked in all along the way and thatâs always been the cornerstone of the whole thing, it never really came up. It might have been in one conversation for about one minute and everybody said, âNo, no, no, no. We want to be old school.â Weâre old school in a lot of ways; weâre shooting film. Iâm not shooting in IMAX, but I just found out last Friday that weâre making an IMAX print. Iâm actually going to go check a reel, tomorrow, of it for foreign. Thereâs a foreign window and there will be foreign IMAX. Now, itâs not shot in IMAX but itâs supposed to look fantastic, so Iâm going to see a reel of it tomorrow. I donât know if itâll ever be exhibited in the United States, but I think overseas itâll show.Itâs interesting, I just interviewed Len Wiseman for Total Recall and he told me the exact same thing that his DI, I forget the technical term, but he was saying to me that he checked it overâ¦when they do their conversion at IMAX, it looks fantastic. He was saying to me that, for the foreign market, theyâre going to be releasing Recall in IMAX.GILROY: Iâd love to see the whole thing. I donât know if Iâm ever going to have the chance to see it. One of the markets is China and so if we do actually firm it all up and that does happen, Jeremy and I may go, at the end of September, to China to do that. Like I said, they have one reel ready for me to go look at tomorrow, so Iâll see one reel to see what it looks like. Iâd love to see the whole film in IMAX. I love IMAX when it works right. I donât know how theâ¦if you donât shoot onâ¦whatâd they shoot on? Did they shoot on Alexa or RED cam?They did digital. I forget if it was the RED or the Alexa. It was one of those two cameras.GILROY: I wonder how that translatesâ¦I donât know if they get that much information on the screen. Film isâ¦this has moved to a level of geekdom that I canât fully⦠Iâm going to go over there tomorrow and have a little tutorial, so Iâm a little in advance of this particular conversation. But we are striking an IMAX print. Weâre really off on a tangent⦠I will just say, when you look at Joss Whedonâs The Avengers, I saw that in IMAX at the AMC Burbank and it looked unbelievable. He did not film in IMAX. Their conversion process has gotten much better.GILROY: You have to tweak your DI a little bit because the screen is so much brighter, and anything you do to protect yourself against shitty projection around the rest of the world you donât have to do in IMAX. So you donât have to add the little extra that you might add to protect yourself against faulty bulbs and stuff like that. And the screen is really bright, so we have to do a little bit of tweaking, we have to make sure that weâre in the sweet spot there.Your movie is I believe two hours, give or take. Iâm curious, how long was your first cut?GILROY: Which first cut? The first time we showed it to an audience or the directorâs cut or...Your first cut in the editing room that had all your loose threads and everything.GILROY: I think the first thing that Johnny [Gilroy, editor] put up for me when I came back from Manilla was 2 hours 35 minutes, 2 hours 40 minutes. But you know, 10-15 minutes comes out in a week, and then the rest of it gets very molecular after that. That goes back to your earlier question, thereâs a lot of directors and a lot of great films have been madeâand itâs a totally legitimate filmmaking styleâwhere you shoot like crazy and you find the movie in the editing room, and thereâs just brilliant movies that have been made that way. We donât work that way; I donât want to find the movie in the editing room, weâre building the movie all the way through. So our process at the end is a little more streamlined. Well I was curious about your thoughts on directorâs cuts or extended cuts on Blu-ray. Iâm curious if some of the deleted scenes that you took out will be in a longer cut eventually on Blu-ray?GILROY: I wonât put them in the cut. Itâs actually really interesting, there are three deleted scenesâwe just mixed them and color corrected themâand you probably know a lot more about this than I do, but what I like about it is all three scenes happen in the movie. One of themâs referred to and theyâre completely legitimate parts of our story, they absolutely happen in our film, we just didnât have time to show them to you so thereâs nothing off to the side. I think theyâll be on the straight-up DVD. I wonât go back and put them in the cut, Iâm not a big fan of that. I think it doesnât work as often as it works; I can name a couple pictures where the directorâs cut just doesnât match what the studio cut was. I do think that sometimes, for example Ridley Scottâs Kingdom of Heaven, the directorâs cut is much better than the theatrical.GILROY: Apparently so, I was just put on to that a couple weeks ago. The amazing dudes who did all our sound, that came up anecdotally about what an amazing long version of the film that is and how that film got really raped in the cut.Thatâs actually one of the best films of that year, the directorâs cut.GILROY: Itâs on my long list of things to do when Iâm wasting time, when I get some free time. Itâs an amazing movie. I spoke to Frank Marshall and he mentioned that one of the deleted scenes was Renner talking to the cop. Iâm curious about the other two deleted scenes, do you mind revealing what you cut?GILROY: One of âemâs definitely a spoiler. Yeah letâs not talk about that one then. Is the other one not a spoiler?GILROY: Thereâs one thatâs just really fun and informative about the Outcome program and it sort of tells you more about the Outcome program than the film does. One of them is a spoiler, and one of themâs a really remarkable scene with Jeremy and a state trooper that pulled him over when heâs driving to go meet Rachel Weisz. Itâs just a really interesting character scene. When we were shooting the scene we thought it was [so great], then you get to the end of it and you go, âDid we really think this would ever make the film?â (laughs). But itâs definitely something that happened to him along the way.Obviously youâve been working on Bourne for a while now and youâve been with the Bourne series for a long time. Assuming the opening weekend does great box office, do you think that thatâd be something youâd want to go back to ASAP or do you need to get another film in you to sort of get a new taste in the mouth?GILROY: I have no idea whatsoever what Iâm gonna do next. The only people that they really need to come back are the actors, I mean letâs be honest. I have absolutely no plan what Iâm gonna do, I just literally finished 10 days ago. I feel like my skin is off, itâs been a two-year experience, Iâm gonna rest my eyes and clear my head and maybe get to a desk and try to figure out whatâs exciting to do next. You just try to find something that interests you, and particular something that interests you thatâs gonna consume you the way that these big movies just really eat you up; I mean itâs two years of a lot of hard work and travel. I really donât know.All the Bourne movies have âBourneâ in the title. I would imagine that the next movie would focus on Jeremy Rennerâs character and it might not be Bourne related, do you think Universal can get away from the name âBourneâ in the title or do you think people sort of expect that to sell it?GILROY: Gah, I have no idea. I donât really know. All the talking that Iâm doing, that kind of question can only be answered by the audience. The next couple months the audience is gonna speak, weâre gonna shut up and the movieâs gonna be out there and the audience is gonna tells us what they want and how they want it, and then you move on from there. Thatâs an interesting question. I guess it depends on the audience. Iâm a big fan of Michael Clayton, Duplicity, State of Play. Iâm curious if youâre the type of person that has a bunch of screenplays sitting in the desk? How much is sitting around that youâd like to go back to?GILROY: I have a couple things that fell off the truck along the way. I wish I had something that I felt was fresh enough. Thereâs one or two things that I worked on that were very important to me that have become dated, I think, by circumstances and time. Thereâs a couple things that Iâve done that maybe I spent too much time with and sat with them too long and theyâre not as fresh to me as they used to be. It isnât like when I finished Clayton and I had Duplicity sitting there and I was like, âGod I really wanna get this off right away.â I donât have another one like that. When youâre reading someone elseâs screenplay, how quickly do you know âthis is really good?âGILROY: I can tell in 10 minutes if itâs worth reading. Itâs such an embarrassing thing because it makes you sound likeâI was at someoneâs house the other night and there was a script there and theyâre thinking about doing this script, and itâs from a very, very good writer, and it was just lying there and I was waiting for them to make me a drink and Iâm flipping through it, and I bet I looked at it for three minutes and I could tell it was great. I could tell that I really wanted to read it. You can have the opposite experience of that, but you can tell if somethingâs really good; you just can open it in a bunch of different places and go, âWow this really has authority, this really has something going on.â I hate that idea, I hate that thatâs possible, but I am guilty of it.The Bourne Legacy is now in theaters.