Occasioned by the arrival of “Jason Bourne” in theaters this week, Matt Damon is discussing…the state of independent film. The actor, producer and screenwriter, who first came to international fame when he and Ben Affleck won an Oscar for their “Good Will Hunting” screenplay, bemoaned to Metro during an interview that “the movie, the $15-60million drama, is gone. They just don’t make that movie any more.”
READ MORE: READ MORE: ‘Jason Bourne’ Review: A Useless Sequel Makes the Case For Its Own Irrelevance
This is “a bummer” for Damon personally, as such projects were once his “bread and butter” but now find themselves relegated to TV. “There’s still work there, but the indie movies you’re talking about, yeah, they’re tough to find.” He points to the shrinking DVD market as one reason for the change, saying it “severely cut into the margins that studios would rather bet big on these big titles. And with this whole international audience, the more, you know, the simpler the story the more that it can kind of play, the less language matters so that the more broad appeal that it can play around the world, and that’s why you’re seeing the movies change.”
“Jason Bourne” and the entire franchise of which it’s a part is an example of this kind of movie, of course, but Damon’s indie credentials are hard to dispute — just this year he served as a producer on Kenneth Lonergan’s “Manchester by the Sea.” Read the full interview at Metro.
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