After 12 weeks of filming in the New York area, the production of the upcoming action sequel ‘The Bourne Legacy’ decamped and left the city for an environment where the Bourne series had never before ventured: the untamed wilderness. For two weeks in December 2011, the cast and crew filmed in Kananaskis Country, a system of parks renowned for its spectacular scenery, in the Canadian Rocky Mountains west of Calgary. The dramatic Canadian landscape filled in for the Alaskan Yukon, where Cross finds himself as the story begins.

“We did a lot of scouting by helicopter,” recalls production designer Kevin Thompson, whose locations included remote mountaintops, a frozen lake and a riverbank beside which his crew could build a log cabin, a heavily wooded area and a waterfall. “We looked all over Canada and found most everything within a 30-minute radius of Kananaskis.”

One element of the Canadian shoot remained a wild card: snow. “Our location manager, who’s done a million movies there, said, ‘I can’t guarantee you that there’s going to be any snow,’” producer Patrick Crowley recalls. “So we had snow machines standing by, and we were ready to make our own.” But the Bourne crew enjoyed some luck: Plenty of snow arrived just in time for the shoot. “The day after we left, there was a warm wind called a Chinook that came through and melted all the snow,” he adds. “We didn’t hear about it until about a month afterward…and I’m kind of glad we didn’t hear about it until then.”

‘The Bourne Legacy’ opens with an echo of the image that introduced Jason Bourne to filmgoers in ‘The Bourne Identity’: seen from below, a man floats motionless in water. However, unlike Bourne, who had been left to drown in the Mediterranean Sea in the first film, Aaron Cross is uninjured. After a brief moment of stillness, Cross reveals his incredible stamina: He has deliberately submerged himself in frigid waters in order to retrieve a canister left for him at the base of a freezing waterfall.

To shoot this scene, the filmmakers did everything they could to keep their lead actor, Jeremy Renner, safe in the cold water. “We were concerned from the very first time that we saw the location,” says Crowley. “Even for just going in to his waist, we had a helicopter bring a hot tub there. We had a dry room that was heated. We had an ambulance standing by, and we had three or four people on the set whose specialty was hypothermia.”

The initial plan was to shoot only part of the scene in Canada, with Renner in a full wet suit and in the cold water only up to his waist. However, just before rolling, Renner removed the wet suit’s top. “He said, ‘Are you guys really ready?’” remembers Crowley. “And we said ‘Yup,’ and he said, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’” As cameras rolled in below-freezing temperatures, a bare-chested Renner dunked himself into the icy water for a shot of Cross emerging. Fortunately, Gilroy and his DP got the shot in one take.

Renner was game for the challenge. He recalls: “Cold is cold. If it’s 39 or 29, it doesn’t matter.” He was more unnerved that there was no way to acclimate himself to the experience without simply going through it. “That’s why I was so stressed about it. How do you prepare? I can prepare for a jump or a stunt. I can work out or do whatever stretch. But with this, you just go get cold. That’s it. You have to mentally go there.” Turns out that the water’s bark was worse than its bite. “Actually it wasn’t so bad; it was so bad up to the moment.”

That scene in the frigid river was also of special concern to costume designer Shay Cunliffe, who returns to the Bourne series after having designed ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’. “Shooting in this kind of extremely cold climate becomes a double job for the costume department,” she says. “The costumers who took care of the actors on the set were responsible for their well-being, quite apart from the costume being maintained.”

In freezing temperatures throughout the entire Alberta shoot, Cunliffe’s team had its work cut out. “They were carrying huge dive coats along with them, and because of the snowy locations, the costumers were actually dragging them in on sleds—extra blankets, extra coats,” she shares.

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For director Tony Gilroy, finding the ideal performers to give life to the screenplay was the most crucial element in putting together ‘The Bourne Legacy’. “Everything else can be pushed and fixed or wrangled in some way,” he says. “Acting is magic. I learned that a long time ago.”

To play the part of Aaron Cross, the filmmakers turned to Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner, a performer as comfortable with drama as he is with action. “The reason Jeremy’s such an amazing actor is that he is a complicated guy,” underscores Gilroy. “He’s sweet and he’s hard, and he lets himself draw on all of that, all the time.”

The director says that he’s a longtime admirer of Renner’s work: “I must’ve watched ‘The Hurt Locker’ 18 times. In every scene, he is molecularly involved with the physical aspect of what’s happening at the moment. This integrity that he has, this feet-on-the-ground awareness and this surprising, explosive intelligence, made Jeremy the perfect cousin for Bourne.”

Any concerns that the filmmakers might have had about Renner’s ability to transform into an action star were instantly assuaged. In fact, the director calls his leading man a “movie athlete.” Gilroy says: “Jeremy came to us at a really high learning curve. When they took him out to the track the first time, the reports were: ‘Oh my God. Wow. He can do this and this…and this…and this. We don’t have to double this!’ Jeremy’s so good that he actually was at the level where the insurance company got nervous.”

“Jeremy is an actor of such intensity and intelligence,” adds Smith. “We’ve seen in his performances that he comes out of the screen, grabs you by the throat and takes you on an incredible journey.”

After his Academy Award-nominated roles in both ‘The Hurt Locker’ and ‘The Town’, Renner went on to make his mark as an action hero in the blockbuster ‘Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol’ and this summer’s global juggernaut ‘The Avengers’. He says that he was a fan of the Bourne series and of one man’s performance in particular: “What Matt Damon did, and what the previous directors have done, was great.

For those who love the franchise, I’m not replacing Matt, nor would I want to. It would never have been interesting if I was taking over and playing the same character. Matt is always the face of Jason Bourne and always should be. I liked this script because it was a very interesting way of continuing the story while honoring what came before.”

The performer elaborates on Gilroy’s underlying premise that, although Cross travels in a world that is parallel to Bourne’s, Cross is not aware of Bourne. Renner reflects: “They don’t know each other, so this has a whole new spin on why these supersoldier spies are the way they are now. I hope I can bring a fresh perspective to it.”

Renner goes on to share that ‘The Bourne Legacy’ retains the realistic tone of the earlier films. “It doesn’t veer into the CGI world or massive explosions,” he says. “It stays authentic. It was important for me to want to find humanity within this character.” He found his filmmakers were just as interested in these concepts. “What matters is that there is believability in everything we do in the film. No matter what the stunt is or the setup, it’s all based in reality, truth and the potential of science. As an actor, that’s easy to grab onto.”

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The narrative architect behind the Bourne film series, Tony Gilroy, takes the helm in the next chapter of the hugely popular espionage franchise that has earned almost $1 billion at the global box office: ‘The Bourne Legacy’. The writer/director expands the Bourne universe created by Robert Ludlum with an original story that introduces us to a new hero (Jeremy Renner) whose life-or-death stakes have been triggered by the events of the first three films.

For ‘The Bourne Legacy’, Renner joins fellow series newcomers Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Stacy Keach and Oscar Isaac, while franchise veterans Albert Finney, Joan Allen, David Strathairn and Scott Glenn reprise their roles. You can read more about the movie, coming to cinemas in August, if you visit www.thebournelegacy.com.

With Calin Farell’s ‘Total Recall’ also on the horizon this year, it may not come as a surprise that Sylvester Stallone’s ‘Judge Dredd’ will return to cinemas in the new form of Karl Urban in ‘Dredd’. The story is familiar: The future America is an irradiated waste land. On its East Coast, running from Boston to Washington DC, lies Mega City One – a vast, violent metropolis where criminals rule the chaotic streets.

The only force of order lies with the urban cops called “Judges” who possess the combined powers of judge, jury and instant executioner. Known and feared throughout the city, Dredd (Karl Urban) is the ultimate Judge, challenged with ridding the city of its latest scourge – a dangerous drug epidemic that has users of “Slo-Mo” experiencing reality at a fraction of its normal speed.

During a routine day on the job, Dredd is assigned to train and evaluate Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), a rookie with powerful psychic abilities thanks to a genetic mutation. A heinous crime calls them to a neighborhood where fellow Judges rarely dare to venture – a 200 story vertical slum controlled by prostitute turned drug lord Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) and her ruthless clan.

When they capture one of the clan’s inner circle, Ma-Ma overtakes the compound’s control center and wages a dirty, vicious war against the Judges that proves she will stop at nothing to protect her empire. With the body count climbing and no way out, Dredd and Anderson must confront the odds and engage in the relentless battle for their survival.

The endlessly inventive mind of screenwriter Alex Garland and director Pete Travis bring ‘Dredd’ to life as a futuristic neo-noir action film. Filmed in 3D with stunning slow motion photography sequences, the film returns the celebrated character to the dark, visceral incarnation from John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra’s revered comic strip.

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