{"id":146850,"date":"2025-08-15T04:09:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T04:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/146850\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T04:09:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T04:09:16","slug":"universal-just-paid-a-ton-to-become-jason-bournes-forever-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/146850\/","title":{"rendered":"Universal just paid a ton to become Jason Bourne’s Forever Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even as Amazon continues to make headlines over its \u201cFuck it, it\u2019s Bond\u201d-expensive efforts<\/a> to get hold of (and then actually make use of) the rights to the James Bond franchise, Hollywood\u2019s other well-known J.B.-initialed spy has just scored a lucrative payday. Deadline reports<\/a> that NBCUniversal has just emerged from a bidding war to re-secure the rights to Robert Ludlum\u2019s Jason Bourne character, signing what\u2019s reportedly a \u201cvery large deal\u201d to take back control of all of the franchise\u2019s non-publishing rights.<\/p>\n

Bourne has operated in the NBCUniversal orbit for more than two decades at this point, ever since Universal handled North American distribution for Matt Damon\u2019s\u00a0The Bourne Identity\u00a0back in 2002. The series has since stayed in-house ever since, through the original three Damon movies, rights-extender<\/a>\u00a0The Bourne Legacy, and revival project Jason Bourne\u2014to say nothing of\u00a0Treadstone, the USA Network series that ran for three short months<\/a> in 2019. But six fallow years had apparently allowed the rights to lapse back to Ludlum\u2019s family, who reportedly took offers on the rights from various money folks, \u201cincluding two from streamers, one from another major studio and a few entrepreneurial ventures.\u201d The estate then reportedly took their newly established price tag back to NBCUniversal, which agreed to pay it to keep the franchise in-house\u2014forever, apparently, as the company announced today that it had picked up the rights in perpetuity.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know how much money Universal dropped on re-acquiring the package, but it does raise obvious questions about what they plan to\u00a0do\u00a0with them: As we noted before, the sole attempt to franchise the series out into TV only made it to a single season, and everything after the end of the original trilogy has struggled. (2016\u2019s\u00a0Jason Bourne<\/a>\u00a0was technically the highest-grossing film in the franchise, but $415 million at the box office, off of a $120 million budget, isn\u2019t the kind of performance that has executives immediately clamoring for more\u2014and that\u2019s before you take into account the critical dings it took.) It\u2019s possible, of course, that it\u2019s as simple as no one wanting to have to rebrand or rename The Jason Bourne Stuntacular\u00a0at Universal Studios Orlando\u2014although we have to imagine that probably would have been cheaper than shelling out undisclosed-but-massive amounts of money in order to hold on to the rights.<\/p>\n

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