Best movie of the year so far: Bourne Ultimatum.

How many Bourne books were written?

 

I think the fourth has been written and a fifth is in the works...

 

Now I can agree with that.

 

Re-reading this thread eight months later, I stand by my Julia Stiles rant.

 

I stand by my notion that Paul Greengrass is one motherfucker of a director.
Bloody Sunday, United 93 and this?
Nice body of work.

 

All-knowing Wiki shows fifth book came out in 2007 ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Bourne

There is zero chance the movie will be based on the fourth book, since the main plot is Bourne meeting his thought-to-be-dead son who is now an assassin hired to kill his father.

 

Don't waste your time, EStreet. Nothing in the Bourne movies compares to the incredibly great Ludlum books. The movie may very well be all that, and then some. And that's OK. But it is what it is based on the screenplay. It doesn't come close to resembling the book or equaling it in quality. If you want to see a good match between the screen and print, watch the original film with Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith (1988). It is true to the book.
Don't get me wrong, the new films are excelently produced and filmed. My questin is why can't they (Hollywood in general) put the same care and cinematic excellence into a screenply that bears a resemblance to the book? It would leave nothing out, it would only add to a quality piece of literature. (See Dr. Zhivago, Fiddler on the Roof, Winds of War, etc.)

 

FWIW,

The fourth and fifth books in the Bourne series were not written by Ludlum, who died in 2001.

 

If you actually read the books, you know that only the first movie follows the plot of the eponymous book. The second and third movies are pretty much just stand-alone screenplays, save for some minor story elements.

 

I don't know that the second and third movies are stand-alone screenplays -- they're really more like one screenplay with slightly different fight and chase scenes.

Still fun, though.