Last week, we reported that a new Jack Ryan TV series from producer Carlton Cuse (Lost), writer Graham Roland (The Returned), Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes, Skydance TV, and Paramount TV had set off a bidding war. Today, Variety reports that Amazon has “won” the rights to a new series based off the Tom Clancy character.
For those who don’t know, in Clancy’s books Ryan goes from a CIA analyst all the way to the White House, because in Tom Clancy’s crazy world, a guy who personally stops nuclear submarines and terrorists will also be the one who’s elected President (if that were true the Seal Team Six guy who shot Bin Laden should run in the upcoming election). It doesn’t help that Ryan’s a charisma-free character who’s usually surrounded by more interesting folks, namely John Clark (played by Willem Dafoe in Clear and Present Danger and Liev Screiber in The Sum of All Fears).
According to Variety, Fox, NBC, Netflix and A&E were also in the hunt for this new series, but there are no details on what exactly Cuse and Co. were pitching that had everyone so interested in a character whose last film, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, flopped at the box office. Hopefully, the next time we see Jack Ryan, it won’t be yet another story of the reluctant everyman hero who uncovers a terrorist conspiracy because that hasn’t worked since Harrison Ford played the character over twenty years ago.
