Even though **The Sum Of All Fears **was a critical and commercial success back in 2002, Tom Clancy’s iconic hero, Jack Ryan, hasn’t been seen on the big screen since. Paramount has been trying to relaunch the character ever since, with all stories indicating that they were going for a Batman/Bond-style reboot with a younger actor taking on the role of the noble CIA analyst.
But, according to a throwaway sentence in an article by Kim Masters at The Daily Beast, the perfect Jack Ryan may have presented himself to them – and he’s at the other end of the age scale.
George Clooney is said to have declared an interest in taking on the role previously played by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck, and it’s a fit so perfect we can’t imagine why Paramount hasn’t snapped his hand off and started work on a new Ryan movie immediately.
After all, at 50, Clooney is about the right age to play Ryan, if any new movie is geared to take place after Clear & Present Danger, and he’s got the right mixture of physicality, political acumen, intelligence and heart-on-his-sleeve emotion to play the character.
Several Clancy novels remain unfilmed – including Executive Orders, where Ryan becomes President of the United States following a hideous terrorist attack that wipes out virtually the entire government – but if Paramount went down that route, they’d have to seriously update the stories to reflect the ever-changing political landscape.
Of course, this is all rumour and hearsay, but Clooney as Ryan just feels right. Do you agree?