At long last having applied the John Clark character in Jack Ryan adaptations, Clear And Present Danger and The Sum of All Fears, Paramount appears to be moving forward with spearheading efforts to turn Clark into a franchise hero of his own. Previous news arose last July on the matter and now word from Justin Kroll at Variety reveals that Black Panther co-star Michael B. Jordan, the latest center of Man Of Steel hype, is being tapped to star in the role for origin adaptations, Without Remose and Rainbow Six, with the former up first on the roster.
A partial description of the book from Clancy’s official website reads as follows:
John Kelly, former Navy SEAL and Vietnam veteran, is still getting over the accidental death of his wife six months before, when he befriends a young woman with a decidedly checkered past. When that past reaches out for her in a particularly horrifying fashion, he vows revenge and, assembling all of his old skills, sets out to track down the men responsible, before it can happen again.
At the same time, the Pentagon is readying an operation to rescue a key group of prisoners in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp. One man, they find, knows the terrain around the camp better than anyone else they have: a certain former Navy SEAL named John Kelly.
Kelly has his own mission. The Pentagon wants him for theirs. Attempting to juggle the two, Kelly (now code-named Mr. Clark) finds himself confronted by a vast array of enemies, both at home and abroad — men so skillful that the slightest misstep means death. And the fate of dozens of people, including Kelly himself, rests on his making sure that misstep never happens.
Men aren’t born dangerous. They grow dangerous. And the most dangerous of all, Kelly learns, are the ones you least expect…
The character, iterated by the late Tom Clancy, has reportedly appeared in seventeen books dating back to “The Cardinal of the Kremlin” in 1988. “Without Remorse”, the seventh book in the Jack Ryan series, published in 1993 preceding the eleventh book, “Rainbow Six”, which was initially announced last summer for a potential Ryan Reynolds starrer.
Transformers franchise pointman Akiva Goldsman is also leading the charge producing both films now with Jordan, Josh Appelbaum, and Corin Nemec producing. Jordan’s next theatrical run will be this Thanksgiving in Stephen Caple Jr.’s Creed 2 with Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson and Dolph Lundgren.
