Although the Christopher McQuarrie-directed “Jack Reacher” opened to a muted response stateside last Christmas—its opening haul was $15 million with the final domestic tally just over $80 million—international audiences were more kind, with the Lee Child adaptation making $138 million abroad. Naturally, Paramount is looking to get back into business with the anti-hero.
Deadline reports plans are being made to do a “Jack Reacher 2.” Instead of tackling any of the other seventeen novels, Paramount and Skydance Productions are looking at Child’s latest installment, this fall’s “Never Go Back,” to use as the basis for the 2012 film’s sequel. The novel sees Reacher return to the Virginia headquarters of his old Army unit where he gets arrested for an old crime he doesn’t remember committing and finds out that he may have fathered a child. Here’s the Amazon synopsis:
Former military cop Jack Reacher makes it all the way from snowbound South Dakota to his destination in northeastern Virginia, near Washington, D.C.: the headquarters of his old unit, the 110th MP. The old stone building is the closest thing to a home he ever had.
Reacher is there to meet—in person—the new commanding officer, Major Susan Turner, so far just a warm, intriguing voice on the phone.
But it isn’t Turner behind the CO’s desk. And Reacher is hit with two pieces of shocking news, one with serious criminal consequences, and one too personal to even think about.
When threatened, you can run or fight.
Reacher fights, aiming to find Turner and clear his name, barely a step ahead of the army, and the FBI, and the D.C. Metro police, and four unidentified thugs.
With “Mission: Impossible 5” gearing up for a shoot next summer to make Christmas Day 2015, both Tom Cruise and McQuarrie are understandably too busy to get to this sequel any time soon. The studio’s not waiting, however, and is putting the call out to writers to get cracking on a script. In the meantime if you need your Cruise fix, you’ll have next year’s “Edge Of Tomorrow” which will have its first trailer in front of “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” this weekend.
