Amazon is not messing around with their coming JACK RYAN series. They are putting a lot of money into it and making it relevant to the times in an attempt to try to draw in viewership for John Krasinski's turn as the character.
Speaking with Collider, Krasinski explained that this won't be your typical show but more of a movie told across 10-parts with a movie-sized budget to maintain the scale desired.
We’re doing 10 episodes and I think the interesting part about it is exactly what you said, everything’s changed so much; the line between film and TV has blurred so much over the years, I think Jack Ryan is a product of that blurring so much that I think that they’re not even really considering it a TV show, they’re calling it a movie that’s being told in 10 parts; and that’s not just an argument of semantics, it’s actually true. Carlton Cuse’s whole plan is we’re gonna shoot it on a movie budget, we’re gonna have the same stunts as movies, it’s gonna feel like a movie but you’re gonna watch it every week. His whole idea was he just felt that two hours wasn’t enough time to tell a Jack Ryan story because Tom Clancy’s books are so detailed and rich, and the character of Jack Ryan if he has a superpower is his intelligence, so there’s a lot of problem solving and things that take time, and that’s the beauty of the spy genre.
Geez… How much is this thing going to cost? I hope they make those dollars count, because when it comes to Jack Ryan, the key component of his stories is… well, Jack Ryan. If you don't put that intelligent character in a captivating story, you've got nothing that anyone wants to watch, no matter how much money you put into the budget for stunts, action and explosions. All of that stuff is dessert to the satisfying main course audiences desire.
As for the terrorist threat that Ryan will be trying to combat for the first run of episodes, it's pretty relevant to that modern-day setting.
Every year they’re gonna be different. They’re sort of more ripped-from-the-headlines type stuff, so the first year the villain or I don’t know what you want to call it is it’s taking on ISIS for sure.
Jack Ryan just became really easy to rally behind. Hopefully this series does the character justice and Krasinski works after the shortcomings of Ben Affleck and Chris Pine in the previous two Jack Ryan cinematic efforts.