“Jack Reacher is an archetypal American hero and a modern day ronin: he’s traded a life of rules and structure to live this nomadic life, free of emotional attachments and responsibilities.”
Since 1997, readers have been riveted by the exploits of Jack Reacher, who first appeared in the pages of author Lee Child’s “Killing Floor” and continued on in a series now spanning twenty novels.
Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise) returns to the big screen with his particular brand of justice in the highly anticipated, action-packed sequel Jack Reacher: Never Go Back.
Tom Cruise and Cobie Smulders discuss a scene from Jack Reacher: Never Go Back with writer-director Edward Zwick
The film follows Reacher as he races to uncover the truth about active duty soldiers, once under his command, who are being killed.
Years after resigning command of an elite military police unit, the nomadic, righter-of-wrongs Reacher is drawn back into the life he left behind when his friend and successor, Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders) is framed for espionage. Reacher will stop at nothing to prove her innocence and to expose the real perpetrators behind the killings of his former soldiers.
Born in Winnetka, Illinois, Edward Zwick (Director/Screenwriter) began directing and acting in high school and trained as an apprentice at the Academy Festival in Lake Forest. While studying literature at Harvard, he continued writing and directing for the theatre. Upon graduation, he was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship to study in Europe with some of the major innovative theatre companies. Zwick was accepted as a Directing Fellow at the American Film Institute in 1975. “Timothy And The Angel,” Zwick’s AFI short film, won first place in the student film competition at the 1976 Chicago Film Festival and caught the attention of the producers of the television series, “Family.” He served as story editor on “Family” and subsequently became a director and producer. For his work on the television movie, “Special Bulletin” (as director, producer and co-writer), Zwick received two Emmy Awards. It also marked the beginning of his collaboration with Marshall Herskovitz, with whom he then created the Emmy Award winning television series, “thirtysomething.” Together Herskovitz and Zwick created The Bedford Falls Company as their home for film and television projects, including the critically acclaimed television series “My So-Called Life,” “Relativity” and the Emmy Award and Golden Globe award-winning series, “Once And Again.” Zwick began his feature film career directing “About Last Night.” He went on to direct the Academy Award winning films “Glory” and “Legends Of The Fall.” Zwick also directed the films “Courage Under Fire,” “The Siege,” “The Last Samurai,” “Blood Diamond,” “Defiance” and “Love & Other Drugs.” Zwick and Herskovitz also produced the Oscar-nominated “I Am Sam” as well as “Traffic” — winner of two Golden Globes and four Academy Awards — directed by Steven Soderbergh. Zwick most recently directed and produced “Pawn Sacrifice
Based upon Lee Child’s 18th novel in the best-selling Jack Reacher series, that has seen 100 million books sold worldwide, the film was directed by Edward Zwick from a screenplay by Richard Wenk and Edward Zwick & Marshall Herskovitz.
Producer Don Granger brought the hit series to Tom Cruise’s attention, which led to Cruise starring and producing 2012’s Jack Reacher, an adaptation of the Child’s ninth Reacher novel “One Shot” that went on to gross over $200 million in worldwide box office.
After the success of Jack Reacher, producers immediately started developing the next film, basing it on “Never Go Back,” a more recent book in the series.
“The great thing about the Jack Reacher novels is that they’re not chronological,” Granger explains. “There’s not a lot of continuity that you need to be familiar with to enjoy the story. With the exception of Reacher and his toothbrush, there are very few characters that carry over from book to book.”
Child describes the lasting appeal of his character: “Reacher is a modern iteration of the mysterious stranger. The American paradigm is the Western, where a mysterious rider comes in off the range, sorts out the problem, and rides off into the sunset, but this character is universal. Medieval Europe had the knight-errant, and feudal Japan had the ronin – banished knights forced to wander the land, doing good deeds.”
Appropriately, director and co-writer Edward Zwick previously worked with Tom Cruise in 2003’s The Last Samurai.
“I immediately connected with this story and this character,” says Zwick. “Jack Reacher is an archetypal American hero and a modern day ronin: he’s traded a life of rules and structure to live this nomadic life, free of emotional attachments and responsibilities.”
“There’s a wish fulfillment in a character like Reacher,” says co-writer Marshall Herskovitz. “We all want to be somebody who’s going to stand up to the bad guys, and Reacher is this one man retaliatory force for justice. He’s on his own and he doesn’t take crap from anybody.”
Marshall Herskovitz (Screenwriter) is a director, screenwriter and producer who frequently collaborates with Director Ed Zwick and with whom they run the film and television company, The Bedford Falls Company, named for the fictional town in “It’s A Wonderful Life.” He is the creator and executive producer on the television shows, “thirtysomething,” “My So-Called Life,” and “Once And Again.” Herskovitz directed the features, “Jack The Bear” and “Dangerous Beauty.” Herskovitz won an Emmy for his writing on “thirtysomething” and has been honored by both the Writers Guild and Directors Guild for his work on the series as well as winning a Golden Globe for Best Drama Series.
Despite their wide variety of film and television work, frequent collaborators Zwick and Herskovitz had yet to tackle the crime thriller. “It’s not the kind of thing you’d expect us to write,” Zwick admits. “But I’d always wanted to do a crime thriller because I’m fascinated by the detective genre, from the classics by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler to the more contemporary sensibility that Lee brings. I’ve done things with a lot of action and I’ve done things that are more character based, so when Tom approached me and had me read the book, I saw an opportunity to put it all together. This genre can really be a lot of fun.”
“I was excited when Ed said yes,” says producer and star Tom Cruise. “Ed and I have been looking for something to do together ever since The Last Samurai. I have such admiration for Ed as a writer and a filmmaker. You look at his movies; he fully immerses you in a time and a place. That is what I love about movies: feeling the texture of the characters and the environment that they’re in that Ed captures so well.”
![Writer Richard Wenk attending the premiere of 'The Mechanic' held at the Arclight Theatre in Los Angeles on January 25, 2011. Photo by Hubert Boesl/DPA/ABACAUSA.COM (Newscom TagID: abausaphotos403462) [Photo via Newscom]](https://i0.wp.com/writingstudio.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/richard-wenk-image.jpg)
Richard Wenk (Screenwriter) most recently wrote the screenplays for the upcoming “Magnificent Seven” and “The Equalizer,” starring Denzel Washington. He also wrote the screenplays for “Expendables 2,” “The Mechanic,” starring Jason Statham and Ben Foster, the Bruce Willis action film “16 Blocks,” directed by Richard Donner, and “The Lake,” an original action thriller for director Luc Besson. Wenk also is a director. He wrote and directed the comedy “Just the Ticket,” starring Andy Garcia and Andie MacDowell. He marked his feature directorial debut with “Vamp,” from his original screenplay.
“What drew us to “Never Go Back” over other Reacher novels were the character dynamics between Reacher, Turner and Samantha,” Granger explains.
“All three are fiercely independent loners, and we wanted to explore what happens when those kinds of people are forced to work together. Ed’s great at bringing those type of character relationships to the screen.”
“Never Go Back is unique in that it’s not primarily a stunt movie; it’s a character piece,” muses Tom Cruise. “Even so, Reacher as a character has his own very unique brutality.”
“For me, filmmaking is all about collaboration,” Cruise sums up. “If we’re all working towards the common goal of making absolute best movie we can, that in itself is valuable. If the people I work with have a good experience, I’ll probably get to work with them again. Same goes for audiences. When we make a great movie that the audience connects with, we get to make another one. I hope people love this movie, because we loved making it.”