For some reason, I keep playing this scene over and over in my head where Ron Howard visits Robert Ludlum to ask whether there’s some more Bourne novels that might be up for grabs. Sure, he’s made a ton of money adapting Dan Brown novels, but he’s growing tired of them. Feeling stifled, he heads to Ludlum for some true action solace. Fortunately, Ludlum is fresh out of Bourne material since Paul Greengrass is already borrowing all of his books, but he does have something mysteriously named “The Parsifal Mosaic.”
So, shrugging his shoulders, Howard takes it.
But that’s absurd. Because Robert Ludlum is dead.
Regardless, Variety is reporting that the director is set to tackle The Parsifal Mosaic which is one of Ludlum’s lesser-known works – a story about a CIA agent who believes he witnesses the murder of his double-crossing KGB lover.
To be honest, all of this stuff really blurs together for me. Bourne is definitely a household name by now, and it’s been injected with a ton of personality, but Ludlum’s stuff all sounds exactly the same to me. In fact, Universal is producing The Bourne Quantum of Solace alongside this project and another Ludlum conspiracy thriller called The Sigma Protocol.
Don’t get me wrong. I realize that saying all of his stories blur together is a bit like claiming that the Bond movies seem all the same or Tom Clancy stories all seem similar. The truth is that they sort of are – but they are usually based off intrigue and built on the personality of the main character coming through.
So whether or not this thing works probably depends solely on who they cast as the lead character. My vote is for Matt Damon. He seems like he could do a good job, and since he’s already Jason Bourne for Universal, he could easily star in Sigma and Parsifal pretty easily. He’s probably on the lot right now. It might be slightly confusing, but I think audiences would get over it.
What do you think?
