Michael B. Jordan’s ‘Without Remorse’ May Go Straight To Amazon Instead Of Opening In Theaters
Amazon Studios is reportedly in final negotiations to acquireWithout Remorse, theMichael B. Jordan-led action thriller based on the novel by Tom Clancy.
Paramount currently holds the distribution rights to the project and had a theatrical release planned for later this year, but if the deal goes through, Amazon is expected to drop the movie directly onto its Amazon Prime Video service. A shift to Amazon would also put this new movie alongside the company’sJack Ryanseries, which stars John Krasinski and is also based on a Clancy property. Could this open the door for a crossover?
According toVariety, Paramount is in final talks to make aWithout RemorseAmazon deal and sell the global rights to the movie. As the film industry has shifted toward big intellectual property-driven blockbusters and franchises in this millennium, Paramount has struggled to keep up. It has a handful of franchises —TransformersandMission: Impossiblebeing the standouts — but the fact that they’re willing to sell offWithout Remorsesignals that they aren’t confident that it can be one of their top-tier properties in the years to come. Perhaps they’re still experiencing nightmares from 2014’sJack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, their most recent attempt to launch a franchise in the Clancy-verse. (Reader, it did not work.)
Without Remorseis directed byStefano Sollima(Sicario: Day of the Soldado), is written byTaylor SheridanandAkiva Goldsman, and stars Michael B. Jordan as John Clark, an ex-Navy SEAL-turned-CIA-operative who first showed up in Clancy’s novels (17 of them in total) and later appeared in multiple movies. The character was first portrayed by Willem Dafoe inClear and Present Dangerand later by Liev Schreiber inThe Sum of All Fears. Those films primarily focus on Jack Ryan, but this new one will tell his origin story, following his quest for vengeance after his girlfriend is killed by a Baltimore drug lord.
The film co-starsJamie Bell(Fantastic Four) as Robert Ritter, the CIA deputy director of operations who helped recruit Kelly into the organization, andJodie Turner-Smith(Queen and Slim) as Karen Greer, a potential love interest for Jordan’s character. Karen is a new character, butThe Wire’s Wendell Pierce plays Admiral Greer in theJack Ryanseries, so perhaps she’s playing his daughter in this film. And again, the Amazon connection could theoretically open the door for a shared universe, with the characters from the movie and the show overlapping.
Jordan already has a relationship with Amazon, since his Outlier Society production company has a first-look TV deal set up there. And Sollima has ties with them as well, having co-created and directed last year’s drug runner seriesZeroZeroZero.
