Amazon is getting its fill of series named after characters with the first name Jack. The retail giant has officially greenlit a “Jack Reacher” TV series, based on the popular Lee Child books.
“Scorpion” creator Nick Santora will serve as writer, executive producer and showrunner on the upcoming series, which was given a script-to-series to commitment last summer. In addition to Santora, the series will be executive produced by Lee Child, Don Granger, Scott Sullivan and Christopher McQuarrie, with David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Marcy Ross executive producing for Skydance. Carolyn Harris oversees the series for Skydance.
The series is a co-production between Amazon Studios, Skydance Television and Paramount Television Studios, the same team behind Amazon’s “Jack Ryan” series, which has been greenlit through Season 3. The first season will be based on the first Jack Reacher novel, “The Killing Floor.”
“Lee Child has created an incredible character and world; it will be the goal of every writer, producer, actor, executive and crew member to capture the essence of Mr. Child’s books — and luckily Lee has been there, and will continue to be there, to help guide us along the way in this series. He is the pulse of Reacher,” said Santora.
Tom Cruise starred in a pair of big-screen films based on the character — “Jack Reacher” and “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back” — both of which were produced by Skydance and Cruise/Wagner and distributed by Paramount.
The first film, which was released in 2012 and directed by McQuarrie, went on to earn $218 million at the global box office (and $80 million domestically). The 2016 sequel, which saw Edward Zwick take over as director, grossed only $162 million globally, and just under $59 million in the U.S.
In 2018, Child said that he was looking to reboot “Jack Reacher” as a TV series with a new lead to replace Cruise, who he argued, “didn’t have that physicality” of the character. In his books, Child frequently describes Reacher as being 6 feet 5 inches tall, with hands “the size of dinner plates” — they have also been described as the size of “a supermarket chicken,” or “Thanksgiving turkeys.” Cruise is listed at 5 feet, 7 inches.
Jack Reacher has appeared in 23 novels from Child, along with a slew of short stories and novellas.