If you were hoping for a third installment of the JACK REACHER franchise with Tom Cruise in the title role, well, it seems that you're out of luck. Author Lee Child, who has penned the Jack Reacher series of novels, spoke with BBC News and revealed that he signed a deal last week to reboot the Jack Reacher franchise into a TV series.
This means that a new actor could soon be stepping into the role of Jack Reacher, and Lee Child said that unlike Tom Cruise, the next actor to play Reacher will be physically appropriate. In the novels, Jack Reacher is quite the imposing figure, standing 6'5" with "a six-pack like a cobbled city street" and hands "the size of dinner plates." That doesn't exactly describe Tom Cruise, and when the actor was initially cast in the first film, there were some who complained that he was physically unsuitable. Turns out, Lee Child now agrees with them.
I really enjoyed working with Cruise. He's a really, really nice guy. We had a lot of fun. But ultimately the readers are right. The size of Reacher is really, really important and it's a big component of who he is. The idea is that when Reacher walks into a room, you're all a little nervous just for that first minute. And Cruise, for all his talent, didn't have that physicality.
This is a man who has hung off the side of a plane as it took off, flew a helicopter throughout cramped canyons, and scaled up the side of the Burj Khalifa. Sure, he may not be a giant, but I would sure as hell feel a little nervous when he walked into the room. "So what I've decided to do is – there won't be any more movies with Tom Cruise. Instead we're going to take it to Netflix or something like that. Long form streaming television, with a completely new actor," Child continued, adding that he wants "all those readers who were upset about Tom Cruise to help me out – participate in choosing the right actor for the TV series. We're rebooting and starting over and we're going to try and find the perfect guy." Any suggestions? Although I loved the first JACK REACHER movie (directed by Christopher McQuarrie), the second film, JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK, felt like an enormous step backwards, so although I never had any problems with Tom Cruise playing the role, I'm open to the franchise rebooting itself as a TV series.