Skydance Exec: Bringing Jack Reacher To TV Is “Realistic” In Current Landscape – Produced By

Skydance Media President and Chief Operating Officer Jesse Sisgold was on a Produced By panel today titled “The Keys to the Kingdom: Financiers & Distributors.” In discussing Skydance’s streaming and television ventures, Sisgold brought up the Jack Reacher series and why Skydance is going the streaming/TV route.

Tom Cruise played the title character in two films. The 2016 sequel, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back under-performed, so a third film was unlikely.

“We’re just being realistic about the landscape,” Sisgold said. “For us, those straight down the middle, awesome action thrillers in that mid-range budget, they just seem to lend themselves to an episodic experience. It’s not the old days [of television], where you had to limit it down to a pretty low scale.”

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Another actor will play Reacher in the series. Readers of Lee Child’s book have been clamoring for a taller, bulkier actor as Reacher is described on paper.

Whoever is cast, Sisgold says television can now match the quality of a feature film. He knows from producing the Jack Ryan TV series with Amazon, based on Tom Clancy’s hero of The Hunt for Red October and Clear and Present Danger.

“The enrichment we have to do high scale episodic television with someone like Amazon, you get that almost theatrical like level of quality,” Sisgold said. “People want to see that story over and over.”

Moving to streaming or television does not reduce the audience either.

“We had as many people tell us they love Jack Ryan, the series, as almost what I hear about Mission: Impossible,” Sisgold said. “It was pervasive so we hope to repeat that with Jack Reacher.”

Skydance partners with Paramount to distribute films. Paramount released the Jack Ryan and Jack Reacher movies, and expect to have the same stake in the series.

“[Jack Ryan] was a co-production with them, a 50/50 arrangement and the same idea with Jack Reacher,” Sisgold said.