‘Reacher’ Author Explains Why He “Vetoed” Third Tom Cruise Movie, Calls Prime Series A “Fabulous Luxury”

As Prime Video’s Reacher prepares a fifth and sixth season, the franchise’s creator is happy with the freedom provided by this adaptation.

Author Lee Child, who penned the Jack Reacher books on which the series is based, explained why he “exercised that veto” on a third entry in the Tom Cruise movies, opting instead for the “fabulous luxury” of a streaming series.

“I had a clause in that movie contract that after two movies I had a veto whether we would do any more. I exercised that veto,” he told Collider. “The deal was done in 2005, and it finished in a long, long time of development. Then the two movies finished in 2017. That first movie in particular was huge. It came out in December 2012. By January 2013, like one reporting cycle later, I had eight old paperbacks in the Top 10. You cannot buy that, and you cannot turn it down.”

Cruise starred as the former army police officer in writer/director Christopher McQuarrie’s Jack Reacher (2012) and co-writer/director Edward Zwick’s Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016).

Child added, “By 2017, of course, there was a whole new landscape. Binging television had been invented. Broadband was much more widespread. It was a thing now. It was not a thing in 2005. It hadn’t been invented, and nobody, I think, now would ever go for a feature film over streaming television for two reasons. First of all, the running time — it’s fabulous luxury. It really is. Eight hours, 10 hours, 12 hours, whatever you want. You can tell the whole story, all the light and shade, all the quiet parts, all the fun parts. It doesn’t have to be rammed together for 90 minutes of content.”

In 2022, Season 1 of Prime Video’s Reacher premiered with Alan Ritchson in the titular role. “The finances are totally different. With a feature film, the actor attracts the money. What actor is worth a $200 million investment?” explained Lee Child.

“Whereas with television, the platform pays it, and you can have anybody. You can have total unknowns,” he added. “The star on television doesn’t really attract either the audience or the money, and so we had a completely free hand for casting.”

Before Season 4 of Reacher premiered on Prime Video in August, the streamer gave it an early renewal for Season 5 back in May. The upcoming season adapts Make Me (2015), the 12th book in Child’s series, in which Reacher hitches a train to the Midwestern town of Mother’s Rest, where he helps private investigator Michelle Chang search for her missing colleague.

After Season 4 amassed 66 million viewers globally in its first 28 days on Prime Video, Amazon doubled down and gave the show an early Season 6 renewal.