Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher 3 Could Have Been Rated R

If a third Jack Reacher film starring Tom Cruise’s had happened, it could have been rated R. Cruise is currently one of the most well-known actors around, with the 58-year-old appearing in many hit films over the years such as Mission: Impossible, Top Gun, and Minority Report. In 2012, the actor took on the role of Jack Reacher, a fictional action hero that has been at the center of more than a dozen books by Lee Child.

The first Jack Reacher movie starring Cruise was directed by Christopher McQuarrie, a director that Cruise would later re-team with for Mission: Impossible- Rogue Nation and Mission: Impossible- Fallout. Despite Jack Reacher being McQuarrie’s first directing gig in over a decade, the action film got mixed to positive reviews with fans and critics. The movie did well enough for Paramount Pictures to warrant a sequel, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, which released four years later in 2016. The sequel didn’t do as well with fans and critics, which was partly why Jack Reacher 3 never saw the light of day.

McQuarrie recently sat down with Empire to reveal that he and Cruise had discussed the possibility of the Jack Reacher franchise continuing with a third film. McQuarrie said that if Jack Reacher 3 would have happened, it could have been rated R and featured a lot more brutality that the book series is known for. The director explained, “Tom and I were talking about, had the series continued, to take Reacher to a place where, in the post-Deadpool, post-Joker world, Reacher could have been an R-rated movie and an R-rated franchise and really fed into the brutality of those books. We were fully ready to lean into that.” 

McQuarrie also teased in his interview that he and Cruise are developing another project that will feature “a very un-Tom character” since the Jack Reacher franchise has moved on without the actor and director duo. A few years ago, Child revealed that Jack Reacher was getting a TV reboot, but that they are recasting the titular character. Not much else has been revealed about the Jack Reacher TV series, but just this year, it was announced that Amazon picked up Jack Reacher, with the first season adapting Child’s first Jack Reacher novel, The Killing Floor.

While Jack Reacher 3 likely didn’t happen because of the poor reception of Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, a big reason another film never happened was because of Child. The author regained the rights to his character after 2016, and it seems as if Child was never a big fan of Cruise in the role. Child has stressed in past interviews how the character’s “physicality” is extremely important, and also that he thought Cruise was too old for action movies.

Despite McQuarrie’s recent comments, it’s unknown if he was ever really considering Jack Reacher 3. His discussion with Cruise has clearly happened in recent years as he mentioned they were talking about an R-rating after the success of Deadpool and Joker. An R-rated Jack Reacher film could have reinvigorated the franchise, but fans are likely just as excited to be getting a TV series since Child is onboard as an executive producer.

Source: Empire

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Christopher Fiduccia
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Christopher is a news writer, editor, and senior trainer at Screen Rant. He graduated from Rock Valley College in 2018 with an Associate of Arts degree and a Media Production Specialist certificate.

After running his own movie blog for over five years, Christopher joined the Screen Rant team in 2018 as a list writer. Christopher is a sucker for ‘80s horror and giant monster movies but has covered a wide range of topics during his employment at Screen Rant.

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