The co-creators and executive producers behind upcoming Amazon series Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, Carlton Cuse and Graham Roland, explained why The Office and A Quiet Place star John Krasinski was the perfect fit for the titular everyman and CIA-analyst-turned-hero — and inadvertently made the case for Krasinski portraying the next Mr. Fantastic.
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“When you do something like this, it was a very narrow target. I realized that as good as wrote the show, if we didn’t get the right guy, the show wasn’t gonna work,” Cuse told EW when asked how the filmmakers zeroed in on Krasinski for the lead role.
“And you need to find a guy who’s a leading man, who is vulnerable, who has got a big brain — because that’s Jack Ryan’s superpower, is his brain — plus he’s gotta be a believable action guy, [and] we wrote the character with charm. I mean, the more characteristics you add, the shorter the list gets of guys that can do it. And John was the guy who we felt embodied everything we wanted in the character.”
Unlike the highly-trained, technically-proficient and well-oiled killing machines played by Matt Damon and Daniel Craig in the Bourne and Bond franchises, Jack Ryan is a green, Khakis-wearing analyst, tasked with stepping out from behind a desk and into the field and trading pencils for pistols.
“One of the things that makes Jack Ryan distinct from, let’s say Jason Bourne or James Bond, I think is this feeling that here’s a guy that his superpower is his brain, he’s not well-equipped to enter every single situation, he’s not an awesome fighter, that he sort of rises to the occasion,” Roland said.
“And so that’s kind of one of the defining characteristics of Jack Ryan, and we definitely wanted to bring that to our show. That this is a guy who everybody can kind of relate to a little bit, and gets in over his head, and will he or will he not rise to the occasion.”
Reed Richards, the big-brained leader of the Fantastic Four, is typically a flawed and complicated but family-focused scientist who relies on brains over brawn despite possessing the superhuman ability of super-plasticity, allowing him to stretch and transform his body into extreme malleable states.
Krasinski, having already proved himself action hero-worthy as GRS member and former U.S. Navy SEAL Jack Silva in the Michael Bay-directed 13 Hours, has emerged as the fan-favorite frontrunner to assume that role when Marvel’s first family are incorporated under the Disney-owned Marvel Studios banner following the completion of Disney’s $71.3 billion acquisition of Fox, who have long held the live-action screen rights to the Fantastic Four brand.
The star said in April he would “love” to headline Fantastic Four with real-life wife and A Quiet Place co-star Emily Blunt, who is similarly often “fan cast” as Susan Richards, the Invisible Woman, wife of Reed Richards.
“I’d love to do something like that. If there are any [superhero roles] left, a lot of these have been taken, but the ones that are left, yeah, I would love to do something like that,” Krasinski told ScreenRant. “And listen, I’d love to work with her again so any chance I got would be great.”
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan premieres August 31 on Amazon Video.
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Image Credit: Marvel Studios
