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Ahead of his speaking tour in Australia this month, author Lee Child has confirmed talk of a “Jack Reacher” TV series.
Child, known as ‘the strongest brand in publishing’ according to Forbes magazine, tells Australia’s The Herald-Sun that they’ve decided to abandon the Tom Cruise-starring film series and instead concentrate on bringing the popular literary character to TV.
And the likely home? “they’re currently in advanced talks with Netflix”, says the paper.
According to Deadline, Skydance TV and Paramount TV – who recently teamed up to successfully reboot as a TV series with a new actor another famous book series that already had been made into action movies, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan for Amazon – are producing the new series.
Child, who has written 23 Reacher novels, praised Cruise’s acting chops in an interview with BBC Radio Manchester, but that “Cruise, for all his talent, didn’t have that physicality,” noting that the actor’s height put people off the movies.
“I really enjoyed working with Cruise. He’s a really, really nice guy. We had a lot of fun,” Child said. “But ultimately the readers are right. The size of Reacher is really, really important and it’s a big component of who he is… 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.”
He added: “We’re rebooting and starting over and we’re going to try and find the perfect guy.”
There have been two films based on the “Reacher” series, including 2012’s ”Jack Reacher” and 2016’s ”Jack Reacher: Never Go Back”.
