The late and great Tom Clancy may no longer be with us, but his works and imagination continue in the form of spin-off books, films and video games featuring his famous characters. Now word comes that a television series based around Jack Ryan, his central protagonist in many of his novels, is in development.
Introduced in Clancy’s very first novel The Hunt for Red October, Jack Ryan is a former marine turned CIA analyst who gets swept up in global conspiracies and politics. He’s the main character in the majority of Clancy’s novels, eventually becoming President of the United States in the series. On film the character has had five films with Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and Chris Pine playing him.The series will most likely find another actor to play the role of Ryan rather than attempt to get Pine back as the character.
Lost veterans Carlton Cuse and Graham Roland are tapped to showrun the Jack Ryan series with Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes and Paramount TV producing the show. Rather than be direct adaptations of the novels, as the first couple movies were, this show will instead be a contemporary take on the character in his prime and use the novels as source material. It sounds a bit like how The Sum of All Fears and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit were more inspired by the novels than direct adaptations, only Ryan will be a CIA veteran instead of a fresh-faced rookie in this series.
Spanning 14 books officially written by him and several more ghost written shortly before and after his death, the Jack Ryan series continually proved to be worldwide bestsellers. The series also introduced fan-favourite character John Clark, a CIA operative who would go on to form the counter-terrorist squad Rainbow Six, itself a best-selling series of first-person shooter games. The Jack Ryan films have also earned nearly $1 billion worldwide. With such an expansive wealth of stories, a television series based on Tom Clancy’s most well known character has the potential to be an interesting show. Currently no outlet is attached, but that will be sure to change soon as Tom Clancy’s name still remains quite popular.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng&v=qvTY7eXXIMg
Originally published September 23, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
