Lee Child Vetoes Tom Cruise’s Reacher 3 Plans, Collider Reports — and Fans Are Split
Collider reports author Lee Child vetoed Tom Cruise's plans for a third Jack Reacher movie. Fans on Reddit are split over whether Cruise ever fit the part.
The headline landed like a punch: Tom Cruise’s plans for a third Jack Reacher movie have been vetoed by the man who created the character, author Lee Child.
That’s the story as Collider tells it. And on r/entertainment, it went straight to the top.
The Door Slams on Reacher 3
Cruise played Reacher on the big screen, and a third film was reportedly on his mind. According to Collider, Child said no.
That alone is a tidy piece of Hollywood drama: the star of a franchise, the author who dreamed up the hero, and a sequel caught between them.
But the news itself wasn’t what fans wanted to talk about. They wanted to talk about size.
“Tom Is No Reacher”: The Case Against the Casting
For one camp, the veto felt overdue. Their argument is simple: Reacher is supposed to be a wall of a man, and Cruise isn’t.
Fans who know the books say his enormous frame is mentioned again and again, in every novel. In their telling, it’s the whole point. Reacher doesn’t have to care what anyone thinks, because nobody can stop him. Cruise, they argue, could never carry that on screen.
Many of them point to the TV series instead. They see Alan Ritchson as the real thing: the guy from the books, right down to the build. One commenter put the verdict bluntly: skip the Cruise movie and just make one with Ritchson.
Some fans took it further and said Cruise should never have been cast at all.
Then the thread veered off-road, as threads do. Commenters swapped stories about what it’s like to be six foot three and apparently become a magnet for drunk strangers who want to throw punches at a bar. Others, equally tall, said nobody has ever bothered them. One joked that Ritchson would never fit in a Top Gun cockpit. It was a very long, very silly detour.
Age came up too. Several fans suggested Cruise is getting on for heavy action roles and might be better steering toward comedy, pointing to his turn in Tropic Thunder.
“The First Film Was Solid”: The Case for Cruise
The other camp wasn’t buying the pile-on.
Yes, they said, Cruise doesn’t match the character on the page. But the first movie was good, and some fans credit that film’s reception, and Cruise’s A-list pull, with making the whole Reacher universe possible. In their eyes, no Cruise movie could mean no TV show.
A few admitted they enjoyed the films precisely because they’d never opened the books. Without that mental image of a giant, the movies simply worked as action pictures.
Even they weren’t unanimous, though. The sequel got a rougher reception, with one fan calling it really bad, while agreeing the first was great. Plenty of people were happy to praise Cruise as an actor while still saying the role wasn’t built for him.
And a few fans had little patience for the whole debate. Their view: take the Reacher series, give them more seasons, and leave it there.
One Author, Two Reachers
So who wins? Nobody, really. Child’s veto, as reported, settles what happens to a third Cruise film. It doesn’t settle the argument fans have been having since Cruise first stepped into the part.
One side sees a miscast star finally getting the brush-off. The other sees a franchise-starter getting shoved aside by the thing he helped build.
Both can be true. And somewhere, a very tall man is being asked to fit into a fighter jet.
FAQ
What is the Jack Reacher 3 news?
Collider reports that author Lee Child vetoed Tom Cruise's plans for a third Jack Reacher movie.
Who is the other Reacher fans keep mentioning?
Fans on Reddit point to Alan Ritchson, who plays Reacher in the TV series. Many prefer him to Cruise because he matches the character's size from the books.
Sources
Featured image — Photo: Kevin Paul / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)