The $270 million role that Matt Damon turned down: “Get over it”
The multi-talented Hollywood icon Matt Damon kicked off his career in style by co-writing and starring in Good Will Hunting alongside his childhood friend Ben Affleck. The blockbusting Gus Van Sant direction won the pair the Academy Award for ‘Best Original Screenplay’. Meanwhile, serving as icing for the cake, Robin Williams won an Oscar for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for his role as Will Hunting’s therapist Sean Maguire.
Damon’s early success evaded the dreaded Oscars curse as he emerged from the 1990s with the pedal to the floor. After consolidating his position with a praised acting appearance in Anthony Minghella’s 1999 movie The Talented Mr. Ripley, Damon found steady stride with high-profile roles in the Ocean’s reboot and the Bourne action franchise.
The first two movies in the series, The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy, sculpted one of Damon’s most memorable characters and garnered a vast following by the mid-2000s. Encouraged by this success, Paul Greengrass, who had directed the 2004 sequel in Doug Liman’s stead, sought to helm a third movie, The Bourne Ultimatum.
Despite taking its name from Robert Ludlum’s third novel, unlike the first two movies, The Bourne Ultimatum was only loosely based on the original book. Discussing the original script for the third appearance of Jason Bourne, Damon noted deep concerns.
“It’s really the studio’s fault for putting themselves in that position,” Damon told GQ in relation to the incoherent project. “I don’t blame [writer] Tony [Gilroy] for taking a boatload of money and handing in what he handed in. It’s just that it was unreadable. This is a career-ender. I mean, I could put this thing up on eBay, and it would be game over for that dude. It’s terrible. It’s really embarrassing. He was having a go, basically, and he took his money and left.”
Damon also cited reservations about the general filming and production process for the movie. “We had a start date,” he added. “Like, ‘It’s coming out August of next year.’ We’re like, ‘Hang on, we’ve got to figure out what the script is.'”
Continuing, the Martian actor identified another twist that left a rather sour taste. “Before the movie came out, he [Gilroy] arbitrated to get sole credit,” Damon explained. However, following an investigation, Gilroy was turned down and now shares credit with Scott Z. Burns and George Nolfi. “That was just a little bit of justice, I have to say,” Damon commented.
“If I didn’t respect Gilroy and appreciate his talent, then I really wouldn’t have cared. My feelings were hurt. That’s all. And that’s exactly why I shouldn’t have said anything,” Damon concluded on the matter.
Compounding Damon’s frustration at the time, The Bourne Ultimatum project left him with a real-life ultimatum. In 2019, the actor told GQ that, before Sam Worthington, he had been offered the lead role in James Cameron’s record-breaking blockbuster, Avatar. As it turns out, Damon deeply regretted turning down the $270million role.
“I told John Krasinski this story when we were writing Promised Land,” Damon remembered. “We’re writing this movie about fracking. We’re writing in the kitchen, and we’re on a break, and I tell him the story and he goes, ‘What?’
“And he stands up and he starts pacing in the kitchen. He goes, ‘OK. OK. OK. OK. OK.’ He goes, ‘If you had done that movie, nothing in your life would be different. Nothing in your life would be different at all. Except that, right now, we would be having this conversation in space.'”
Renewed with perspective, Damon admitted that, despite not taking the lucrative Avatar role, his finances are in order. “But my kids are all eating,” he said. “I’m doing OK.”
Addressing Damon’s regretful ultimatum in a 2022 interview on BBC Radio 1, Cameron issued a dose of tough love. “He’s beating himself up over this, and I really think, Matt, you’re kind of like one of the biggest movie stars in the world. Get over it,” The Canadian filmmaker said. “But he had to do another Bourne film, which was on his runway, and there’s nothing he could do about that, and so he had to regretfully decline.”
Since 2022, things have not gone quiet over in the world of Avatar, with two more movies both going on to make big bucks at the box office. While it is hard to say whether Damon would have found his way on t the cast list for each new edition of the blue-tinted story, you cannot deny that it would have been quite the money spinner if it had, with Cameron’s blockbuster franchise easily becoming one of the most commercially successful of all time.
However, as Cameron denotes, there isn’t much in the career of Damon that one could call a serious misstep. Sure, he gave up over a quarter of a billion dollars, but the Bourne series was hardly a dead horse to be flogged at the local market. And, since then, things have only got better.
