In June of 2011 Tom Cruise signed on to play the title character in Christopher McQuarries Jack Reacher a crime thriller based on a series of novels by Lee Child. This immediately caused a bit of an uproar among fans, as Cruise did not match Childs physical description of Reacher in the books. Child was diplomatic during press tours explaining that Cruise may not look like Reacher but conveyed the presence of Reacher which is more important when you have a real life person playing the part. Jack Reacher is in Childs words an unstoppable force he was once in the military police corps and few movie stars are better at playing unstoppable steely determination than Cruise.
Despite what the fans of Childs novels may have felt the first Jack Reacher film went on to earn $218 million worldwide on a relatively modest budget of $60 million. It was enough to inspire a more expensive but less well received sequel in 2016 called Jack Reacher Never Go Back directed by Edward Zwick. The lackluster critical and audience response to the sequel effectively ended the Jack Reacher film series. The Jack Reacher novels, however have continued apace with the most recent volume having been published in October of 2021. While Child has slowly backed away from the series he announced in January of 2020 that he would retire from the series the novels will reportedly continue under the authorship of his younger brother Andrew Grant.
Though the Jack Reacher film franchise may be dead the continued popularity of the novels has inspired a new TV series set to debut on Amazon Prime on February 4, 2022, and it will not star Tom Cruise. While Cruise may or may not have been open to playing the role in a TV series its likely that the world's biggest movie star now 59 has far too high a salary for even a streaming services bloated budget. The real reason Cruise would not be playing Reacher in the new series is simple The showrunners wanted someone taller.
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