Looks like the team trying to drag Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp character to the screen are going to go back to the casting drawing board. Chris Hemsworth had been in talks to make the journey from Asgard to the role of the young Rapp, but Deadline reports that he’s turned down the offer.
American Assassin, which is sourced from Flynn’s Rapp novels, would chronicle the early years of the titular hero, when he was a college athletics scholar. When a terrorist attack kills someone close to him, he signs on to hunt bad guys for the CIA.
The film has Jeffrey Nachmanoff set to direct from a script currently credited to Mike Finch. Bruce Willis apparently remains in negotiations to play Rapp’s mentor at the agency.
Hemsworth had been considering the role, but his increasingly busy schedule proved a roadblock. He’s currently close to finishing work on Thor: The Dark World, then he’ll move onto Steven Spielberg’s Robopocalypse. After that, he has a little movie called **The Avengers 2 **likely to eat up a chunk of his free time.
So while we can't write our threatened "Rapp Star" headline just yet, it's coming people... It is inevitable.