Matt Damon Still Wants To Play Jason Bourne: If We Can Find A Good Script, We’ll Do It

Fans of The Bourne Trilogy were disappointed when Matt Damon sat out for the latest film (based on the Robert Ludlum novels).

But just because Matt didn’t sign on for “The Bourne Legacy” doesn’t mean he’s finished playing the CIA super-assassin.

“I’ve always been [open to returning],” Matt told Access Hollywood at the “Promised Land” junket in Los Angeles on Friday. “I love that character and I love that series. It’s just really an issue of finding the story. We don’t know what that is. How do you get that character going again?”

Adding, “If we could crack that, we’d do it.”

The 42-year-old star stays in touch with Paul Greengrass, who directed the second and third films in The Bourne Trilogy (he said the pair talk “all the time”), and their conversations always include brainstorming about how to bring Jason Bourne back to the big screen.

“We have a bunch of stuff we talk about but Bourne always comes up, inevitably, because it’s a big, significant part of our lives,” he said. “And so we would love for it to work out, but it’s a tough one.”

What wasn’t tough was writing the script for his latest film, “Promised Land” (a drama that takes on the issue of drilling for natural gas – aka “fracking”), which he penned with “The Office” star John Krasinski.

The actors met over dinner with their wives and immediately hit it off – and Matt raved to Access about John’s talent.

“He’s brilliant on [‘The Office’] and I love that show — everybody loves that show — but the breadth and scope of the guy’s talent is pretty vast,” he said of John. “And in talking to him, that becomes clear pretty quickly. So, instantly I just started looking for stuff we could do together and then he came to me with this story, and so we just started writing.”

Writing with John was so easy that it reminded Matt of writing with his longtime friend and “Good Will Hunting” co-writer, Ben Affleck.

“It was eerily similar [to writing with Ben], actually,” he said of writing the film’s script at his home, with his four daughters around. “I laughed a lot [with John], which I did with Ben too. I had a lot of laughs. I mean, my wife said to me in the middle of the process, she said that she hadn’t seen me that happy ever!”

Adding, “The kids were running in and out of the room and [my wife] was watching John and I write and [saw] how much fun I was having and she said, ‘This has been a great reminder to you how much you love writing.’”

See Matt and John in “Promised Land” – in theaters on January 4.

— Erin O’Sullivan