Spotlight On Matt Damon

EW: You have The Informant! and Invictus coming out this year and an Iraq-war drama, Green Zone, set for next year, at a time when adult-oriented movies seem to be struggling at the box office. What do you make of all the hand-wringing over the state of movies for grown-ups?
Matt Damon: It's definitely a different world than it was a few years ago. Everyone is more skittish right now, and it's much tougher to get a green light. We're probably reading too much into it. There's a tendency to look for trends in such short time frames; Duplicity and State of Play come out and don't do business and people say, ''This is the end of the movie business as we know it!'' Ultimately, a studio's goal is to make movies that 13-year-old boys want to see twice, so a certain percentage of movies are always going to be big, loud, and kind of dumb — movies that my nephews absolutely love. [Laughs] But the rest of us want to go see movies too.

EW: Has the success of the Bourne franchise given you the freedom strictly to do projects that appeal to you without having to worry about their commercial viability?
Damon: I do very little career calculus. Early on, I saw friends of mine take jobs for those calculated reasons, and it very rarely worked out. I figured it was an impossible thing to control, so I was totally material-driven. But maybe you're right that the Bourne movies have inoculated me a little bit; if I do one of those every three or four years, at least one movie I make will be seen, you know? [Laughs]

EW: So what's the status of the possible fourth Bourne movie?
Damon: We're hoping to make a fourth, but we don't have a story and we don't have a script. I assume it can happen, but we have to come up with a story line that's deserving. I mean, if you see the Bourne character come out and say, ''I can't remember'' again, you're going to get up and walk out of the theater. It's like, ''Get over it, buddy — it's been three movies. What the f---?!''