John Krasinski‘s time as Jack Ryan might be over on the small screen, but it looks like he will reprise his role on the big screen in an upcoming feature film. Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, often just referred to as Jack Ryan, premiered on Prime Video in August 2018 and featured John Krasinski as the title character, a former U.S. Marine officer and Afghanistan war veteran working as a financial analyst for the CIA. The series is based on Tom Clancy’s popular book series and featured characters from across the Ryanverse, as fans call it. Jack Ryan ran for four seasons and concluded in July 2023, and was consistently one of Prime Video’s best-performing series.
It appears that the Jack Ryan story isn’t done yet. Deadline reported that Krasinski is set to reprise his Jack Ryan role in an upcoming feature film for Amazon MGM Studios, where he will also serve as executive producer. The film will be directed by Andrew Bernstein, an executive producer on the Prime Video series, who also directed three episodes of Season 2. The script is written by Aaron Rabin, who served as a co-executive producer and is credited as the writer of five of the six episodes in Season 4 of Jack Ryan. Wendell Pierce will reprise his role as James Greer, while Mike Kelly is in talks to reprise his role as Mike November.
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Krasinski is the latest in a long line of actors to take on the role of Jack Ryan. Alec Baldwin first played Jack Ryan in 1990’s The Hunt for Red October before Harrison Ford took over the role in 1992’s Patriot Games and 1994’s Clear and Present Danger. In 2002, Ben Affleck played Jack Ryan in the first attempt at a franchise reboot in The Sum of All Fears. Then, in 2014, Chris Pine played the role in another reboot prequel, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. Krasinski’s take on Jack Ryan has easily been the most successful since Harrison Ford’s, and while no release date has been set, it has been ten years since the character Jack Ryan was in a feature film.
Jack Ryan Returns to the Big Screen
The decision to move Jack Ryan from television to the big screen is bold and risky. Movies based on television series, like Mission: Impossible, The Addams Family, and Transformers have done well, but they were all reboots and reimaginings. Outside of Star Trek, where the first six films featured the cast of Star Trek: The Original Series and then the next four featured the cast of The Next Generation, television series continuing as feature film franchises is a risky investment. There tends to be an assumption that general audiences won’t watch if they feel like they need to catch up on a lot of television. Amazon MGM is undoubtedly hoping that Jack Ryan’s significant viewership numbers will translate into box office ticket sales.
While Netflix has generated plenty of headlines for doubling down on prioritizing streaming, much to the frustration of filmmakers like Greta Gerwig and Rian Johnson, Amazon MGM is taking the opposite approach. Jack Ryan is one of many high-profile films the studio is releasing that will hopefully do well in theaters and bring audiences over to the streaming platform once they become available. Amazon MGM also has projects like Masters of the Universe and Voltron moving forward, and now, with Jack Ryan, the studio is seemingly making big plays in the theatrical market. With plans for a Rainbow Six movie, based on another Clancy novel, this might be the beginning of a massive shared film franchise.
- Release Date
- August 31, 2018