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EXCLUSIVE: I’m told that Steve Zaillian is being brought aboard by Paramount to rewrite the new Jack Ryan film. Chris Pine will play Ryan in the Tom Clancy-created series, and Lost‘s Jack Bender is directing. Lorenzo di Bonaventura is producing.
The project till now has been referred to as Moscow, but the film doesn’t yet have a formal title or a start date. It’s an original and not based on one of the Clancy books, but I gather that the launching point of the film is discussed in Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October, both the book and the original film that starred Alec Baldwin. It has to do with a terrifying helicopter crash that nearly killed Ryan when he was a 23-year old platoon leader in the US Marines. He was the only member of the platoon to survive.
The hope is to start production this year. Zaillian knows the Ryan lore very well. He scripted the 1994 Jack Ryan film Clear and Present Danger, the last film that starred Harrison Ford. I’m told he also did a major uncredited rewrIte on Patriot Games, the first film Ford did after replacing Baldwin. Paramount has used a number of scribes to get this far with an origin story about the beginnings of Jack Ryan. It started with Hossein Amini. That didn’t work out. Then, Paramount acquired Dubai, an original spec script by Adam Cozad that Cozad redrafted to be the Ryan relaunch. Anthony Peckham came on to do a pass, and then Cozad was brought back. Now, Zaillian will bring it home. Paramount is co-financing the film with David Ellison’s Skydance.
WME-repped Zaillian just scripted The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and he’s signed to also adapt The Girl Who Played with Fire.
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Great writer, Mr. Zaillian is. At least we know the script for Jack Ryan will be solid in Zaillian’s very capable hands. Good guy, too.
With so many hacks out there taking stabs at shlock scripts and ruining the movies, at least I can sleep at night knowing that Mr. Zaillian is capable of handling this delicious franchise.
I don’t think a reboot will work. Tom Clancy is SO 1980s.
Steve Zaillian is partly Armenian. A lot of people don’t know that.
Thanks I will sleep tonight peacefully.
But enough of sarcasm, everybody should be proud of their heritage.
I’ve got an amazing spec about a lost colony on Mars that features a crippled cat and a dog with gingivitis — any chance Paramount wants to purchase that and put Jack Ryan in the driver’s seat of one crazy ride?
What does Tom Clancy think about this? Last I remember, he wasn’t too happy with the Harrison Ford movies. He seems very sensitive about his characters being adapted for the screen.
He is hardly happy with anything that didnt come from his own hands. He a grumpy, greedy old bastard.
So in other words, Clancy’s creation, like Ludlum’s Jason Bourne, is now being co-opted and bastardized by Hollywood d-people and screenwriters.
Why don’t they leave Ryan alone and name the character something else? It’s like Bond stories written by others than Fleming, or Sherlock in books and film after Doyle. New stories under the supervision of the true creator is one thing, but these creative atrocities are beyond the pale.
Let these beloved literary characters die without hijacking them for studio profit. Let people meet them by reading them in the books that were written by their true creators, the creators who give them their voices. Or at least let them be seen only in movies based upon those legitimate books.
A writer taking over Ryan or another writer’s character should feel awful. Unless he is a sheer mercenary, of course. Zaillian should try creating his own Jack Ryan character.
“Why don’t they leave Ryan alone and name the character something else?”
Cos it is a brand and has a built-in audience and pre awareness. U know anything about this biz?
Dirty little secret: the Bourne movies are better than the books. So bad example.
With that said, McTiernan’s Red October was MUCH better than the sequels and Baldwin was a better Jack than Ford. And since Zaillan contributed heavily to the two average sequels, there is no reason to be excited.
I always thought Ford should have just taken the payday for that Sum Of All Fears script back around 2000. Even an average Jack Ryan film would’ve kept him alive at the box office more than stuff like K19 or Hollywood Homicide.
Actually, I was even hoping the rumors of Ford doing a third Ryan in recent years would’ve proven to be true. For all the promise of restarting as a more faithful series of Ryan films, you know it will simply be another attempt to imitate Jason Bourne.
The two best guys who played me were Baldwin and Affleck. I wanted Affleck to play me again after Sum of All Fears but Paramount stupidly let the franchise die. The helicopter crash was very dramatic but it’s only two minutes of excitement. They’d be better off bringing Affleck back and sending him on a new assignment. There’s no need to reboot me with Chris Pine. Send Affleck to Moscow instead.
Obviously he’s out of the game, but you know who did a lot of both credited and uncredited work on the Jack Ryan series starting with “Red October?” John Milius, just nothing for Baldwin or Affleck. He’d write all the Connery or Richard Harris or Willem Dafoe dialogue.