Deadline reported yesterday that Paramount had brought in
David Koepp to save the Jack Ryan reboot
they stalled a month ago, paying the screenwriter a whopping seven figures to re-draft the script by
Adam Cozad, though in all honestly, it does sound like the project is pretty much going back to the drawing board and it's starting again. Koepp is a top-drawer Hollywood franchise screenwriter, one of the best paid in the industry with credits including Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Angels & Demons, Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds and Spider-Man and it'll be his job to make sense of the screenplay that has gone through half a dozen previous writers including; American Gangster's
Steve Zaillian, Sherlock Holmes'
Anthony Peckham and The Four Feathers'
Hossein Aimini among others.
Chris Pine is still attached to play the Tom Clancy created Jack Ryan, the C.I.A. agent in a new origin story/reboot. Ryan has previously been portrayed by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck in four previous high-profile movies, though the new reboot isn't going to be made until next year when Pine has played Captain Kirk for the second time in this summer's Star Trek 2. Frequent Lost director
Jack Bender makes his feature debut behind the camera. Tentatively titled
Moscow (or Dubai as it was originally pitched), Cozad's idea for the Jack Ryan reboot which has now be 're-purposed' by the writer, supposedly harkens back to a brief mention in Alec Baldwins Hunt For Red October;
It has to do with a terrifying helicopter crash that nearly killed Ryan when he was a 23-year old platoon leader in the US Marines. He was the only member of the platoon to survive.
Paramount are mindful that they want a new franchise for the Jack Ryan character and not just a one off box office success, so they wanna make sure its perfect before they go-ahead with it instead of rushing the unprepared movie in front of camera's this summer and were certainly thankful of that. Koepp will get to work on the movie once he has finished his own directorial effort Premium Rush starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Shannon. Expect it to film next year for a release in 2013.