Sam Raimi & Jack Ryan Together At Last?

Last time we checked, Fernando Meirelles (City of God) was preparing to bring Tom Clancy’s CIA hero Jack Ryan back to the silver screen with a re-boot possibly starring Ryan Gosling (Half-Nelson). Now comes word that Meirelles is out, and Sam “Spider-Man” Raimi is in.

Although Raimi is currently knee-deep on Drag Me to Hell. He’s expected to jump on the Ryan franchise immediately after finishing the horror film for Universal.

Even with his slate full, Raimi is apparently still in the running to direct Spider-Man 4 for Sony. Keep dreaming, folks. Both the un-titled Ryan film and Spider-Man 4 are aiming for summer 2010 releases.

What kills me about this is that Paramount already re-booted the Ryan franchise with 2002’s Sum of All Fears with Ben Affleck as CIA agent Jack Ryan, and that film was a success. Apparently for the next film they had already lined up a screenplay (adapted from the Clancy novel Red Rabbit) and everything, but the plug was pulled (from what I’ve heard) due to Affleck’s popularity going down the toilet (i.e. “Bennifer,” Gigli, etc.)

I’m not shocked by the news of Ryan returning because last summer on the IMDB forum I said they probably would. Well actually my exact words were:

“My own guess is Paramount might take a cue from the 60s/70s-era Bond films (i.e. take the title of the books, names of characters and certain plot elements and essentially create a different story all together) to fit the younger Ryan.”

And for now, that sounds just like what Paramount has in mind. Weird.

Source: Variety

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