Back in September, Deadline.com reported that Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass would return to the Jason Bourne franchise for a new film, the duo’s third Bourne film together and Damon’s fourth as the character overall. On Friday, Damon confirmed the news to E! Online.

“Yes, next year,” Damon told E! about when the new Bourne film will begin production. “It’ll be in 2016 when the movie will actually come out. Paul Greengrass is going to do another one and that’s all I ever said. I just needed him to say yes.”

That’s true. Damon had long said he would only reprise his role in the franchise if Greengrass returned as well.

“I’ve always been open to it if Paul Greengrass is the director,” Damon said to CNBC in May of this year. “We’ve just never been able to come up with a story.”

Damon’s last Bourne film, “The Bourne Ultimatum,” was released in 2007 and grossed more than $442 million around the globe. That feature ended with Bourne walking away from the espionage game.

“If you really look at the mythology of the character, we would have to figure out some reason to get him going again,” Damon said to HuffPost Entertainment in July of 2012. “Paul and I haven’t been able to do it. And we really wanted to make another one; we almost were making one a couple of years ago — and then we just couldn’t crack it.”

In the interim, the franchise took a detour: 2012’s “The Bourne Legacy,” which starred Jeremy Renner as an agent named Aaron Cross.

“I love the idea of Greengrass and Damon,” Renner told HuffPost Entertainment about Damon’s potential return earlier this year. He was excited about the possibilities: “Let [our characters] be adversaries, let them become buddies, whatever the heck it might be — them coming together would be a pretty tremendous thing.”

According to the original Deadline.com report, Renner’s Cross likely won’t be involved in the Damon film, but a sequel to “The Bourne Legacy” with Justin Lin set as director is still in development. Damon’s movie, meanwhile, is set for a July 16, 2016 bow.

For more, head to E! Online.