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Branagh Takes Helm of New Jack Ryan Flick at Paramount, Starring Chris Pine

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Kenneth Branagh has taken the helm at Paramount of the long-in-the-works untitled Jack Ryan project, based on Tom Clancy's character. Branagh replaces Jack Bender, who had scheduling issues...

By Anne Thompson
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March 27, 2012 5:08 PM
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1 Comment

Media folks reveling in the decline of Harrison Ford are missing the point. He was terrific in Morning Glory and he wasn't the star. Rachel McAdams has to take the bullet for not being a ready-for-prime-time player. Supporting actors Ford and Diane Keaton actually pulled in older moviegoers, where McAdams didn't score with her age demo. (WOM could still kick in. Yes, it's a familiar story, and it's no Broadcast News, but it's well-done.) And now that Ford, at age 68, is out of the running for those $20 million leads, he's free! He can do whatever he wants. He doesn't HAVE to carry studio tentpoles anymore. Here's a sample from my latest AOL Moviefone Career Watch column.

By Anne Thompson
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November 16, 2010 8:53 AM
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4 Comments

Paramount Wants Chris Pine for Jack Ryan

Last summer, as producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura was waiting to read the new Untitled Tom Clancy Project from writer Hossein Amini, he told me that the Jack Ryan role could go older, or younger. Well, now that the studio is in deep negotiations with Star Trek star Chris Pine, they're obviously going younger. It makes sense. If the studio has an in-house star (lined up to do the Star Trek sequel), they might as well hang onto him by offering him another juicy franchise role. It amazes me that in the franchise era, it has taken the studio this long to ramp this one up.

By Anne Thompson
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October 19, 2009 11:18 AM
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3 Comments

Clooney Wants to Play Clancy's Jack Ryan

Buried in this Kim Masters story about Sony bringing over George Clooney's production deal is a juicy nugget: Clooney wants to take over playing Jack Ryan in the Tom Clancy franchise. That is, if Paramount ever gets its act together and puts the next movie back on the front burner. It's been years since Ben Affleck took over from Harrison Ford as a younger Ryan, and acquitted himself well in The Sum of All Fears, which grossed $193 million worldwide in 2002.