Whether you want it or not (and we don’t, not really), a new entry in Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan franchise is on the way, with Chris Pine set to be the fourth actor in five movies across twenty years to play the character, a soldier-turned-stockbroker-turned-CIA-analyst. The project, now seemingly officially titled “Moscow,” reworks writer Adam Cozad’s spec script “Dubai” into a thriller where a young Ryan, still working in finance, is framed by a Russian oligarch who’s planning a terrorist plot to destabilize the U.S. economy. Ryan’s forced to go on the run to clear his name and save his kidnapped wife.
Things have been quiet for a few months on the project, but the latest issue of Production Weekly reports that the project is gearing up to shoot “next late winter, early spring,” and that the studio has started to meet with directors. Supposedly Sam Raimi (who was attached to an earlier incarnation of the project, and wanted James Franco in the lead), Gore Verbinski, Timur Bekmambetov and Kevin Macdonald have all taken a meeting on the project. It should be noted , however, that while Production Weekly can often be bang on, these meetings just sound like preliminary discovery talks, and this should be treated as just that for now.
For one thing, all four directors have fairly busy dance cards. Raimi is wavering between “Oz The Great and Powerful” and “World of Warcraft” and Verbinski signed on to “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” a few weeks ago (and is still finishing the animated “Rango,” due next spring). Bekmambetov has a heap of projects in the pipeline, including “Wanted 2,” “Black Lightning,” “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea,” “Moby Dick” and Disney’s “Jungle Cruise” and that’s not counting the number of other films on his production slate while Macdonald is attached to the Hitchcockian thriller “Murder Mystery” from writer James Vanderbilt, as well as helming a crowdsourced YouTube documentary. So don’t be surprised if none of the names above end up doing the project…
