Variety's Mike Fleming is reporting Chris Pine, best known for playing James Kirk in 2009's Star Trek, has begun negotiations to play CIA analyst Jack Ryan in the reboot of the franchise based on the Tom Clancy novels.

In all likelihood this is already a done deal and numbers are just left to be sorted out, which means Pine will be following in the footsteps of Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck as Paramount hopes to re-energize the franchise that failed to do so with Affleck in the lead role in 2002's The Sum of All Fears.

Hossein Amini (The Four Feathers) has penned the first draft of the script based on an original concept, which I am assuming means we aren't talking about a strict adaptation of any of Clancy's Ryan novels. To date, along with The Sum of All Fears, you have Baldwin's The Hunt for Red October (1990) and Ford's two turns in 1992's Patriot Games and 1994's Clear and Present Danger.

Pine will return as Captain Kirk in Star Trek XII, but it is unclear as to whether that will come before the Ryan pic. He is also currently working opposite Denzel Washington for Tony Scott in Fox's Unstoppable and was just announced as the star of D.J. Caruso's The Art of Making Money an adaptation of Jason Kersten's fact-based novel in which Pine will play Art Williams, the alias for a Chicago man who rose from petty theft to become a master counterfeiter.

There is currently no director attached to the Jack Ryan picture.

Related post categories: In Negotiations : Chris Pine

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