‘Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan’ was a beloved action hero of the 90s! Co-creators and Co-showrunners Carlton Cuse (Lost, Bates Motel) and Graham Roland (Fringe, Prison Break) have teamed up to re-create this experience for audiences of the 21st Century in their upcoming Amazon Prime Original series ‘Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan.’
The Hunt for Red October (1984), a book turned film, was a mind-blowing action thriller that kept audience on their toes throughout the unfolding of the plot. The protagonist of the much-loved franchise, Jack Ryan was portrayed as a defender of American values in an era that saw the Cold War, over the course of 11 bestselling books by the late novelist Tom Clancy.
Of course, Cuse and Roland faced an exhilarating challenge when they joined hands with Amazon Studios to redefine this hero for today’s generation and times. Emmy-Award winner Cuse, a master of long-form storytelling through his work on the hit series Lost, and Roland (Fringe), a former U.S. Marine, chose to honor Clancy’s legacy by crafting a fresh, richly detailed Jack Ryan adventure. “For me, the thing that really distinguishes the stories is that they are geopolitical thrillers of the moment that take you inside a world where the story happens in a very authentic way”, says Cuse.
The fictional Marine-turned-CIA operative hero had to be rebooted for current times. While maintaining his qualities that made him a pop culture icon back in the time, Cuse, wanted to create a fresh and detailed Jack Ryan for the upcoming series.
Having read Clancy’s books, Cuse and Roland decided it would be better to create an original storyline from scratch. “Tom Clancy’s novels are very much of their time,” Roland explains. “We had to find a story that was part of the current zeitgeist in terms of what’s going on in the world today. So we took on modern-day terrorism, but also showed the other side of the coin, which I don’t think gets portrayed very often in the media. We wanted to understand how somebody could get to the place of perpetrating terrorist acts.”
In keeping with Clancy’s novels, which typically weigh in at 800 pages or more, the showrunners saw an opportunity to fill the series with fascinating details of modern spycraft as well as engaging character backstories that simply wouldn’t fit into a two-hour feature film. “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan is basically an eight-hour tentpole movie,” says Cuse. “I think this show delivers on those filmic elements people want to see in a Jack Ryan movie, including big-scale action sequences and a globe-trotting international adventure. But our show also has time to dive deeper into both the story and the characters because we have eight hours to tell the story.”
Written and created by Carlton Cuse and Graham Roland in association with Amazon Studios, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan is set to premiere on Amazon Prime Video on 31st August, 2018.
