Highlights

• The Bourne Identity struggled during production, facing delays and issues with the script rewrites.
• Director Doug Liman had clashes with scriptwriters and producers throughout the making of the film.
• Matt Damon was initially seen as a risky choice but ultimately brought a unique approach to Jason Bourne's character.

The Bourne Identity is now considered one of the most beloved action movies in film history. The Matt Damon film opened to critical acclaim and a total worldwide gross of $214,034,224. Despite this, the road to the film which hit cinemas was long and almost didn't happen.

Director Doug Liman was known for being "a complete mess," on set. Yet Liman found himself responsible for making a $55 million blockbuster.

What came next was a production nightmare. From arguments with the studio to script rewrites and fall-outs with the producer, the making of The Bourne Identity couldn't have been even more of a struggle. Yet, despite the issues, it's one of the most influential movies which influenced the Bond franchise, as well as future movies starring Henry Cavill, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.

In the following, we take a look at what happened with The Bourne Identity production that led to it being called a "disaster." We also discuss what led to Matt Damon's casting as Jason Bourne.

Production On The Bourne Identity Was Constantly Pushed Back

Director Doug Liman has a self-confessed tendency to "find" his films during production. This creative approach worked on his previous lower-budget outings, but caused immense tension during the making of The Bourne Identity.

“Every time I had to make a decision, my inclination was against making a traditional action movie."

Liman revealed in a 2008 interview, “I wanted to make an art film the studio could sell as an action movie with trailer moments to trick the audience. They had no idea what to make of this.”

Liman already upset Universal before the shooting even started. He wanted to film the Robert Ludlum adaptation in Paris rather than substitute it for a place that was cheaper to film, like Montreal. “I was like, ‘What are they talking about? Because they speak French in Montreal, it’s going to look like Paris? Like, nothing looks like Paris,'” Liman reasoned.

The on-set issues during production forced The Bourne Identity‘s release date to be pushed back from September 2001 to February 2002 and then to June 2002, due to reshoots in May 2002. The production issues meant Matt Damon ended up being a mediator between the director and the studio. “I would be his surrogate because at least I could be heard,” the Oppenheimer star explained.

“Universal hated me,” Liman said.

“I had an arch-enemy at the studio. They were trying to shut me down.”

Reports went around that Liman had effectively been replaced by producer Frank Marshall, who stepped in after Richard Gladstein left for personal reasons. “I’ve always had a respect for the line between a producer and a director. And I had to step over that line into something that I feel is the director’s responsibility.”

Why The Bourne Identity Had So Many Script Rewrites

Before The Bourne Identity went into production it was "overly chaotic." Tony Gilroy, who’d written the scripts for The Devil’s Advocate and Armageddon hated the Robert Ludlum books. “It was, a huge, you know, fifteen gunmen on the Metro blowing the f***out of everything kind of movie,” Gilroy later explained. He wanted to strip the story to the central premise: a secret agent with a serious case of amnesia.

“I guess your movie,” Gilroy ultimately told Doug Liman, “should be about a guy who finds the only thing he knows how to do is kill people.”

Liman and Gilroy continued to clash throughout the production of The Bourne Identity. Gilroy became annoyed when Liman, who “didn’t have any sense with story” changed his script. Liman called Gilroy “arrogant” and the script was rewritten by William Blake Herron.

Universal asked for more action scenes to be written into the movie, but Matt Damon hated Herron's rewritten script. The Talented Mr. Ripley star threatened to leave the film if it didn't go back to the original script penned by Tony Gilroy. “…When I went to France I got this script that was unrecognizable from Tony’s script and unrecognizable in a way I was really uncomfortable with,” Damon explained.

“It became the exact kind of movie I would pass on, that I don’t want to do and that I avoided doing because there was the perfect number of explosions and everything. And not to knock this writer — because I think he did everything that those writers are supposed to do when they write one of those scripts — it was just totally different from the movie Doug and I wanted to make.”

Tony Gilroy was brought back on, faxing over revising pages for the script while the film was being shot in Greece, Italy, Switzerland and France. Liman upset Universal multiple times by pushing to keep specific scenes from an earlier draft of the script in the film, including one major sequence at a rural farmhouse. This required the producers to pump extra funding into the film, so he could achieve his dreams.

How Matt Damon Was Cast In The Bourne Identity

Matt Damon wasn't always the Hollywood A-lister he is now. In fact, casting him in The Bourne Identity was considered a big risk. Matt Damon was not the first choice for Jason Bourne; Russell Crowe and Brad Pitt were who the producers had in mind for the lead role in The Bourne Identity.

Despite winning an Academy Award for Good Will Hunting and appearing in Saving Private Ryan, Matt Damon's star was yet to fully rise. All The Pretty Horses and The Legend Of Bagger Vance had failed to ignite the box office, and Damon urgently needed a hit.

Doug Liman saw in Matt Damon the opportunity to create a younger more conflicted action hero.

“He’ll figure out the simplest, least energetic, most efficient way to get something done. For example, when the cops surround his car, he’s going to calmly pull out a map, browse through it and figure out a route before he starts driving.”

Matt Damon admits he was shocked at the success of The Bourne Identity after all the on-set issues. “The word on Bourne was that it was supposed to be a turkey,” Damon told GQ in 2012.

“It’s very rare that a movie comes out a year late, has four rounds of reshoots, and it’s good.”