The Jack Reacher film franchise is reportedly done, and will be completely rebooted as a TV series instead. Author Lee Child told BBC Radio that he just signed a deal to make his novels a streaming series and is “going to take it to Netflix or something like that. Long form streaming television, with a completely new actor”.
The popular series of books were first adapted in 2012 by Christopher McQuarrie (Mission: Impossible – Fallout) with Tom Cruise in the lead role. The first film is an exciting, pulpy thriller that grossed a healthy $218 million worldwide.
A sequel without McQuarrie was commissioned, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, with Edward Zwick at the helm, which was very disappointing and clearly showed its airport-novel origins, but still made $162 million in 2016.
It seemed unlikely that Cruise would go back to this franchise anyway, so this news isn’t completely surprising. What is odd is that Child added that “fans were right” when some complained that Cruise was too short to play the role of Reacher, who in the books is described as being a bit of a behemoth.
Cruise was comfortably the best part about both films and embodied Reacher’s intimidating nature in an interesting way. Bemoaning that the films didn’t work because he was too short is nonsense.
What will likely happen now is that Child will get his wish and get a 6’6″ mountain of a man in the lead role, but this person will be a completely bland and uninteresting actor who is only good at looking “tough”. The series will last a couple of seasons at most before whichever unlucky streaming service stuck with it mercifully pulls the plug.
How the novels will work as a series is unclear, as they seemed better fits for standalone films, but many projects that would have existed as movies in the past are now becoming better fits for television, so we’ll see how this one works out.
#Peace.Love.JackReacher
