Tom Clancy go-to protagonist Jack Ryan is headed back to movies—and he’s taking his current most-preferred flesh suit, actor and director John Krasinski, with him. This is per The Hollywood Reporter, which notes that Amazon has put into development a film based on its recently ended Prime Video Jack Ryan TV series, returning the character to film for the first time since Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit in 2014. (There, he was played by Chris Pine, taking over a character previously embodied by Ben Affleck, Harrison Ford, and Alec Baldwin in earlier movies.)
This new film will pretty clearly be rooted in the world already set up by the Jack Ryan TV show, which saw Ryan’s star steadily rise in the world of espionage across its four seasons. In addition to Krasinski, co-star Wendell Pierce has already been confirmed to star in the film, while Michael Kelly, who plays a fellow CIA operative, is apparently in negotiations to return as well. (No word on fourth season cast member Michael Peña, who’s got his own TV spin-off set in the Ryanverse cooking.) The behind-the-scenes status of the film will similarly be a reunion: The movie is being directed by Andrew Bernstein, who previously directed several episodes of its second season, and written by season 4 writer Aaron Rabin.
Krasinski has spent more time behind the camera than in front of it in recent years, having directed movies like The Quiet Place and its sequel and this May’s imaginary friends comedy IF. Still, he’s always seemed to have a soft spot for Jack Ryan, which allowed him to do all that military action stuff he was apparently champing at the bit to do during nine seasons of gently smirking on The Office. Amazon has never seemed to mind, either: The show was a consistent feature of the Prime Video calendar from 2019 forward, giving the streamer a foothold in the action world that it might have otherwise lacked, and regularly ranked atop the streamer’s internal rankings of viewership. No word yet on whether its film continuation is destined for streaming-only life, or whether the studio will try to push it into a wider theatrical release.
English (US) ·