Reacher Creator Officially Confirms ‘Vetoing’ Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher 3

Prime Video’s Reacher, featuring Alan Ritchson, has been renewed for a fifth and sixth season. Long before Ritchson, Tom Cruise was Jack Reacher. Lee Child, the author of the Jack Reacher novels, has finally revealed why there wasn’t a third film featuring Cruise. He told Collider that he “exercised the veto” on a third installment of Cruise’s Jack Reacher, and instead opted for the Prime Video series, which he described as “fabulous luxury.”

“I had a clause in that movie contract that after two movies I had a veto on whether we would do any more. I exercised that veto,” Child told the outlet. The creator added that in 2005, he made a deal with Paramount for his Jack Reacher books to be adapted into feature films starring Tom Cruise. The first movie, based on the book One Shot, ultimately came out in December 2012 and became a massive hit. Then 4 years later, the second movie, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, came out, with Cruise reprising the titular role.

Why There Wasn’t A Third Reacher Movie With Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher: Never Go Back | Credit: Paramount Pictures

Lee Child told the outlet, “By January 2013, like one reporting cycle later, I had eight old paperbacks in the Top 10. You cannot buy that, and you cannot turn it down.” However, that changed in 2017, when more viewers began leaning towards streaming series. In his own words, he believed that a Reacher series would earn better viewership than another film. He believed there were two main reasons for this. A series can have a total running time of eight to ten hours per season, which he saw as a “fabulous luxury,” as he had more room to tell the story rather than trying to fit it all within a 90-minute movie.

The second reason was casting. Child noted that since the platform bears the production cost, he could have any actor, not just someone necessarily known. “The star on television doesn’t really attract either the audience or the money, and so we had a completely free hand for casting,” the creator told Collider.

In an earlier interview with the outlet, Child discussed why he believed Cruise wasn’t a great fit for the role of Jack Reacher. “Obviously, he was completely and utterly wrong for the character. I thought, as an actor, he captured the internals pretty well — the silent characteristic and so on. I thought internally he did really well, but externally it didn’t work,” he said.

When Is Reacher Season 5 Coming Out on Prime Video

Alan Ritchson in Reacher Season 5 | Credit: Prime Video

Back in May, Reacher Season 5 was officially greenlit by Prime Video. Alan Ritchson will reprise his role as Jack Reacher in the upcoming season, which is based on Lee Child’s Make Me. It was published in 2015 as the 20th book in Child’s series. The story of Make Me follows Reacher in the Midwestern town of Mother’s Rest, where he teams up with a private investigator named Michelle Chang to search for her missing colleague.

There is no official premiere date for Season 5 of the series. Reacher Season 4 is currently streaming on Prime Video. Do you think Ritchson is a better fit for the character instead of Tom Cruise? Comment below.