It’s that time again: a new issue of Empire is almost upon us (Thursday June 28, to be precise), and this month’s issue sees Jeremy Renner and The Bourne Legacy headlining a jam-packed, action-focused explosion of a magazine.

Empire travelled to LA recently to shoot Renner and get the lowdown on the new Bourne movie. How do you carry on without, y’know, Jason Bourne? Well, writer/director Tony Gilroy has a plan – and a Shakespearean analogy for what you’re going to see.

“If you think of the first three Bourne films as Rosencrantz and Gildenstern, then we’re showing you Elsinore. You thought you were seeing something you weren’t. What if there’s a much larger story? What if Treadstone wasn’t the only black-ops programme?

“I had never spent one moment thinking about how to do a sequel to Bourne Ultimatum. I first came in for two weeks just to spitball. I had a very random idea…so we started with that and it got more and more exciting. All of a sudden I was staring at something that had a great deal of resonance and was soulful and uncynical and was also gonna kick ass. So that was good.”

And what about new lead character Aaron Cross? Renner says, “He’s coming from a completely different background to Jason [Bourne]. He knows exactly who he is; he signed up to this…He wants to be part of a team. I can tell you he was in the military then he joined the programme. He’s a person who wants to be part of something…to have a sense of purpose. But then it’s taken away.”

Most intriguingly of all, producer Frank Marshall says, “You see there are several different programmes in the movie with different skill sets. All possibilities are open. My dream is that in the next one we see Matt and Jeremy team up.”

Thanks to umuggle, redcognito, fuckitismyphilosophy and theattractivecryingmisha for the scans!