Development Attempts to adapt author
Lee Child's
Jack Reacher novel series into a film have been made ever since the character debuted in 1997's
Killing Floor. After being
optioned with no success to
PolyGram and later
New Line Cinema,
Paramount Pictures and
Cruise/Wagner Productions acquired the film rights in 2005. Screenwriter
Josh Olson was then hired to adapt Child's then-most recent novel in the Reacher series,
One Shot (2005). In July 2010,
Christopher McQuarrie, who previously collaborated with Cruise/Wagner Productions on the 2008 film
Valkyrie, signed on to rework Olson's script and ultimately direct the film.
Casting In June 2011,
Tom Cruise was in talks to play the role of Jack Reacher. The following month, Cruise closed a deal with the studios and signed on for the part. Some fans of the novel series became vocal over the casting of Cruise due to the actor's height (5'7") not matching the height of Reacher in the novels (6'5"). Explaining the casting decision, author Lee Child said that it would be impossible to find a suitable actor to play the giant Reacher and to recreate the feel of the book onscreen, and that Cruise had the talent to make an effective Reacher. Child also said, "Reacher's size in the books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise portrays in his own way." Following the casting of Cruise,
Rosamund Pike was cast as the female lead. Other actresses who were in the running for the role included
Hayley Atwell and
Alexa Davalos. By September 2011, the main cast was locked in with the hiring of
David Oyelowo,
Richard Jenkins,
Jai Courtney, and
Robert Duvall.
Werner Herzog, primarily known for his directorial work, rounded out the cast in October 2011 when he signed on to play the film's chief villain. In April 2017,
Dwayne Johnson revealed that he was in the running to play Jack Reacher before Cruise was hired. In a 2018 interview, two years after the 2016 release of
the sequel, Child agreed that the readers were correct in their criticism, stating: I really enjoyed working with Cruise. He's a really, really nice guy. We had a lot of fun. But ultimately the readers are right. The size of Reacher is really, really important and it's a big component of who he is...So what I've decided to do is – there won't be any more movies with Tom Cruise. Instead we're going to take it to Netflix or something like that. Long-form streaming television, with a completely new actor. We're rebooting and starting over and we're going to try and find the perfect guy. Eventually,
Alan Ritchson was cast as Jack Reacher for the
2022 TV series on
Amazon Prime Video.
Filming Production on the film began in
Pittsburgh in October 2011 and was completed in January 2012. including the
Strip District, the
North Shore Riverfront Park, the
Fort Duquesne Bridge,
Robinson Township,
Sewickley, and
Monroeville. The climactic shootout was filmed at a quarry in
Saltsburg. Cruise performed all of his own driving stunts during the film's signature car chase sequence. "Action to me is something very fun to shoot. The challenge in most car chases is you're trying to hide the fact that it's not the actor driving," McQuarrie said. "The challenge here was the exact opposite. We were trying to find a way to show that it was always Tom driving. He's literally driving in every stunt sequence." In February 2012, Kevin Messick, one of the film's executive producers, sued
Don Granger and
Gary Levinsohn, two other producers, for
breach of contract over a joint venture agreement, claiming he had "helped to develop the film, renew Paramount's options for the rights to the book, and participated in the search for a screenwriter" but starting in July 2010, had been left out of meetings with the screenwriter and the studio and not given certain drafts of the screenplay while it was under development. After spending eight weeks working with McQuarrie on materials to present to producers, Kraemer's hiring was approved and he directly began working on the film's opening eight minutes. "I have a number of tricks that I use to spark the wild creative process," said Kraemer on his scoring process after having seen the film. "Sometimes I'll use my mathematical understanding of music to devise a theme (such as the open fifths of Reacher's theme), sometimes I'll have an orchestral color in mind (i.e. the music for THE ZEC). The actual composing process probably resembles
Max Steiner more than anyone else I know of. I start at the first frame of the movie and work my through to the end, chronologically, in order." The film is noted for its balance between music and silence, with music primarily absent or reserved during a majority of the film's action sequences. Discussing his approach to this balance, Kraemer described, "Music can make such an impact when it enters a scene, and obviously the only way to do that is to have silence beforehand. I also generally like to have long tails on my cues so that they sort of fade away rather than ending abruptly. In this way, I try to weave music in and out very carefully so that the audience is as unaware as possible of the entrances and exits. I often cite
Patton as a prime example of great spotting – a three and half hour biopic with, what, twenty-eight minutes of score? That's unheard of today. But it worked!" A soundtrack album for the film was released on December 18, 2012, by La-La Land Records. ==Distribution==