Paramount's continuing roller coaster effort to revive Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan franchise hit a major road block last week when Jack Bender stepped down as director in order to focus on mounting TV projects. It spoke to the rather lackadaisical approach the studio has taken to the film, which has had Chris Pine attached to star for three years now, yet we don't appear to be any closer to seeing it hit theaters. We don't even know the title.
Fortunately, Paramount may have stumbled into a serious case of trading upwards, as Variety reports that Kenneth Branagh has taken over as director. This will make two major franchises for the classically trained film maker, coming off the $450M he brought in for the studio last year with Thor. Branagh is also attached to direct an adaptation of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Whether he'll still be able to helm that film is in question now, especially with Paramount wanting to push Jack Ryan as a priority now that it's back on track.
The major thing holding the untitled film back has been the tone of the story. Some wanted it to be pure action, like producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura. Paramount had different plans, and the conflicting ideas led to a number of folks tackling the script. Steve Zaillian took a shot at it, followed most recently by David Koepp whose job it was to combine it all and make everybody happy. Unlike the other Jack Ryan movies, this one isn't based on any particular Clancy novel, and features the character as a young man while still working on Wall Street.
The last Jack Ryan film was 2002's The Sum of All Fears, which starred Ben Affleck and grossed just shy of $200M. Shooting won't be able to begin until Chris Pine finishes up with the Star Trek sequel.
