JACK RYAN Reboot Set for 2013 & Possible New Trilogy

Paramount has scheduled their Jack Ryan reboot to hit screens sometime in the fourth quarter of 2013. Star Trek star Chris Pine has been attached to take over the franchise for years, but the relaunching of the series recently gained momentum when Kenneth Branagh came aboard to direct and play the film’s villain. Branagh recently described the concept as “an original story that allows us to understand how Jack Ryan develops into a CIA analyst, before joining, and perhaps even joining, the CIA. It’s a very contemporary action thriller set in the here and now.”  The story’s  launching point is first mentioned in Tom Clancy‘s book The Hunt for Red October— in which a helicopter crash wipes out a Marine platoon – with a 23-year-old Ryan the only member to survive.

The series has gone through a number of iterations – Ben Afleck‘s 2002 effort The Sum of All Fears was the least memorable – with Harrison Ford‘s rendition of the charcater in Patriot Games the most successful – not forgetting a young Alec Baldwin‘s take on the character alongside Sean Connery in The Hunt For Red October.

The flick, tentatively title Jack Ryan, will also star Keira Knightley as Jack’s wife Cathy, and Kevin Costner – whose been signed to possibly feature in multiple films. Paramount is hoping this will be the first of  a new trilogy, with Costner the linchpin in a spin-off franchise playing William Harper, ‘a true blue American idealist who recruits and mentors both Jack Ryan and John Kelly‘. The studio is said to courting Tom Hardy to play John Kelly who features in Tom Clancy’s 1993 novel Without Remorse. Christopher McQuarrie is rewriting to make the story palatable for a wider audience, and will direct the flick. The story traces the beginnings of  Kelly who later becomes John Clark, and sees him trying to take down a drug cartel and rescue American pilots from a prison camp in North Vietnam – the story is said to take some dark turns along the way – and will require some skilled reworking to make the flick more commercial.

There’s plenty of value in the Clancy property, which Paramount understands, and has been taking their time to plan out what could be a very strong franchise – with the charismatic Chris Pine at the centre, this could be a reboot worth catching.