There are pretty much two major things that people tend to remember about the Jack Reacher films (and it doesn’t say much for the franchise’s overall memorability that we had to go back just now and confirm that, yes, there were in fact two Jack Reacher movies). The first is that Werner Herzog plays a bad guy in the first one, having a little bit of fun with his sometimes-sinister persona. And the second is that there was something hilariously off-base about seeing 5'7" Tom Cruise play the titular Jack Reacher, a character who is typically described, in the Lee Childs books on which the films are based, as being six-foot-five and built like a linebacker, which Cruise, for all his action movie bona fides, decidedly is not.
Said size differential will presumably not be an issue for the new Jack Reacher, though, as Deadline reports that Alan Ritchson—who currently plays Hank “Hawk” Hall on DC’s Titans—will be taking over the role for its upcoming TV revival. Ritchson’s previous roles also include Smallville (where he played Aquaman) and Syfy’s late, lamented Blood Drive, the TV show about a massive road race participated in solely by cars powered by human blood. But while the actor’s 6'4" frame is definitely a better fit for Reacher than some other, teensier actors we might care to name, we’re excited for his casting for less immediately obvious reasons: As a talented performer with a deft hand for comedy, he’ll hopefully be able to keep this latest adaptation of Childs’ books from getting too relentlessly dour or brutal.
The Jack Reacher series is being developed at Amazon, and is based off of the Childs novel The Killing Floor. Prison Break and Most Dangerous Game writer Nick Santaros will serve as writer and showrunner on the series.