Paramount has set a 2020 release date for Without Remorse, their Tom Clancy adaptation starring Michael B. Jordan. The Black Panther star has reportedly signed on to lead a pair of Clancy films built around the character John Clark, who is often referred to as the “darker” version of Clancy’s Jack Ryan. The Ryan character of course has been featured in multiple films and, most recently, in the Amazon series Jack Ryan starring John Krasinski.
Set during the Vietnam War, the novel Without Remorse serves as the origin story of John Clark, a former Navy SEAL who goes on a Death Wish-like mission of revenge after his new lover is killed by her former pimp. The story, which is said to have been partly inspired by the novel and movie First Blood, also sends Clark to Vietnam on a Rambo-like mission to rescue American POWs. The character of Clark has been played twice before in Clancy adaptations, first by Willem Dafoe in Clear and Present Danger and then by Liev Schreiber in The Sum of All Fears.
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As reported by The Wrap, Paramount is ready to roll out Michael B. Jordan as the newest incarnation of John Clark in Without Remorse, and have set a September 18th, 2020 release date for the film. Jordan has reportedly also signed on to star as Clark in Rainbow Six, after Ryan Reynolds was originally attached to the project. No release date has yet been named for the second of the two John Clark movies.
As of now, The Croods 2 is the only other major studio film scheduled for release on the same day as Without Remorse. September of course is generally regarded as a cool-down period after the frenzy of summer, so not many big-ticket movies are released in that window. Horror movies lately have come to dominate the month, with The Nun winning September in 2018, and IT dominating the same period a year earlier. Adult fare along the lines of Without Remorse has performed well in September in the past, notably in 2016 when Sully, The Magnificent Seven and Deepwater Horizon all scored solid box office numbers after dropping in the ninth month of the year.
With a bona fide star like Michael B. Jordan in the lead role, Paramount is clearly hoping for better-than-average performance when Without Remorse hits theaters. The possibility exists for a new franchise to be born if the first of the studio’s two planned John Clark movies catches on with audiences and their adaptation of Rainbow Six, the book that has already spawned a very popular video game series, indeed goes forward.
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Source: The Wrap