Lee Child’s best-selling novels will be adapted for the small screen by Scorpion creator Nick Santora. The series will make its home at Amazon Prime Video, and has the potential to become a huge franchise.
Amazon secured the rights to the television adaptation, outbidding a large pool of competitors. The books have sold over 100 million copies, and are available in 49 different languages. This massively successful story follows a military veteran who has adopted a nomadic lifestyle and spends his time working as a freelance problem-solver and investigator.
Amazon Studios will produce the series alongside Skydance Television and Paramount Television. This will not be the trio’s first time working together, as the studios have previously joined forces to create Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, which was similarly adapted from a best-selling series of novels.
Child’s Jack Reacher series has already been developed into two feature films, 2012’s Jack Reacher and 2016’s Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, which starred Tom Cruise in the titular role. Although the first film grossed $218.3 million worldwide, Cruise will not be attached to the television adaptation. Instead, another leading man will be selected to embody the character. Child explained this decision in an interview with BBC Radio Manchester. According to the author, who has penned 23 Jack Reacher novels, “Cruise, for all his talent, didn’t have that physicality.” He added that, “We’re rebooting and starting over and we’re going to try and find the perfect guy.”
Christopher McQuarrie, who directed the first Jack Reacher film and produced the second, will executive produce the television series on Amazon.
Meanwhile, Santora will act as both the showrunner and executive producer. He will be joined by Child, Don Granger, McQuarrie, Skydance’s David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Marcy Ross.
This Jack Reacher adaptation follows behind a number of other novel-to-television adaptations at Amazon Studios. Prime Video is also home to Bosch, the streamer’s longest running original show which is based on Michael Connelly’s novels, and Jack Ryan, which was just renewed for a third season. Amazon Studios is also preparing to launch an adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and a new series based on the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson.