Director Christopher
McQuarrie’s film adaptation of the Lee Child’s 2005 best seller, “One Shot,”
will be heading to the home entertainment market place on May 7 courtesy of
Paramount Home Media Distribution.
Retitled for theatrical
release as simply Jack Reacher (McQuarrie prepped the screenplay — which is his
strong suit, having won the Oscar in 1996 for his Original Screenplay of The
Usual Suspects). The film
pulled in a tasty $79.7 million during domestic theatrical run … the ARR works
out to 137 days.
Paramount has a
stand-alone DVD SKU in the mix, as well as a Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack (with
UltraViolet) edition planned for the Jack Reacher home entertainment
launch.
As the Christmas season
theatrical release date approached you could hear this drumbeat building from
certain sources saying that Tom Cruise wasn’t right for Child’s Jack Reacher, a
man of considerable height and weight (something like six-foot-five and 240
pounds). Of course that’s not Tom
Cruise.
What the naysayers failed
to take into consideration was the writing skills of Christopher McQuarrie, who
delivered the aforementioned The Usual Suspects, plus wrote a
top-notch thriller for Tom Cruise with Valkyrie and saved Mission:
Impossible - Ghost Protocol (even though the WGA took the screen credit
away from him).
Jack Reacher, starring Tom Cruise, is a slick (in a positive
sense), well-produced, well-written thriller and five minutes into it you don’t
give a rip if the novel version of Jack Reacher has lost 10 inches in height
and 80 pounds in body mass. If Cruise
and McQuarrie want to reteam for a series of Jack Reacher-based thrillers … go
for it.
As a reward for
delivering both a successful screenplay and a well-directed action film (a
commercial success), Christopher McQuarrie will be writing and directing the
next Mission:
Impossible entry (tentative for 2015) and he delivered the screenplay
for Cruise’s next big action film, All You Need is Kill (March of next
year).
As to bonus goodies,
which are all exclusive to the Blu-ray SKU, there are two commentary options —
one teaming McQuarrie with Cruise, while the second features composer Joe
Kraemer — plus a trio of featurettes: “When the Man Comes Around,” “You Do Not
Mess with Jack Reacher: Combat & Weapons” and “The Reacher Phenomenon.”
