Mace Neufield produced the first, Alec Baldwin-starring Jack Ryan movie, The Hunt For Red October in 1990, and stayed with the franchise through the Harrison Ford years of Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, and the Ben Affleck reboot The Sum of All Fears. He's also on board the mooted new revival with Chris Pine as Tom Clancy's CIA superspook, and had some surprising information at a recent press conference for Clint Eastwood's Invictus.
There are eight novels as-yet unfilmed in the Ryanverse, but Untitled Jack Ryan Movie is not one of them. "We ran out of books," says Nuefield. "Red Rabbit was the last one, and we just couldn't seem to get a script out of it." Red Rabbit is one of only two novels, alongside The Cardinal of the Kremlin, in which Ryan is young enough for Pine's portrayal to be book-faithful. But those aren't considerations that have bothered the production team before: Patriot Games ought to feature a much younger Ryan than Red October, and the post-C&PD The Sum of All Fears was completely re-tooled as Ryan Begins.
Hasan Amini and Adam Koxac have both been working on the new screenplay, with Koxac currently beavering away at a second draft. Neufield says the film won't be a further re-start contradicting Sum, but will pick Ryan up "when he's on Wall Street". In the books, Ryan works for Merrill Lynch after serving in the Marine Corps but before he's recruited to the CIA. Since Affleck's Ryan was already a CIA analyst, does that make this a prequel to a prequel? Is this the first franchise in history to run backwards?
Suggestions for the plot below please, and bonus points for any that involve using SAMs against investment bankers.