Though it has been touch and go whether Paramount would adapt another of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels in the wake of the first film’s release, the figures apparently add up for the studio, which is partnering once more with Skydance Productions to start working up Never Go Back as a sequel.
Never Go Back hit bookshelves this year, and finds Reacher heading back to his old military base in Virginia to dine with the woman who is now the commanding officer. By the time he gets there, she has been arrested, Reacher finds himself being charged with beating someone up (Jack Reacher? Surely not!) and learns that he may have fathered a child. He can’t remember either transgression but must get to the bottom of it with his trademark insight and generous dollops of brute force.
Tom Cruise will return to the lead, and all involved are hoping that Christopher McQuarrie will be back in the director’s chair. That, will of course, mean waiting for him to finish work on Mission: Impossible 5, but given who stars in that, we figure there will be plenty of scope for Cruise to discuss their ideas as they bring Ethan Hunt and his team back to the screen.
McQuarrie won’t, however, have time to write at least the early drafts on this one, so Paramount is now looking for suitable writers. There had been chatter about squeezing the new Reacher in before making MI5 next summer, but that seems incredibly unlikely. Still, Reacher film fans will be happy to learn that plans are firmly under way for more. We asked Reacher himself for comment but, of course, Reacher said nothing.