WITHOUT REMORSE: STUART BEATTIE ADAPTING THE NOVEL

Successful screenwriter and now director Stuart Beattie has written an adaptation of Tom Clancy’s “Without Remorse” and is keen to make the project his next shot at directing.

First (chronologically) in Clancy’s “Ryanverse” series, the thriller spans four separate story arcs during the Vietnam Warm but primarily fills in backstory details on John Clark, a Navy SEAL who takes on a drug smuggling ring in Baltimore.

Paramount Pictures purchased the screen rights shortly after the novel was published in 1993. After several false starts, the studio is trying again with Beattie, who told MovieHole transforming the 700-page book into a script “the hardest adaptation I’ve ever done.” He sees Josh Hartnett as a possible Clark or an actor in their twenties.

The studio recently hired “Lost” director Jack Bender to re-introduce Clancy’s main hero, Jack Ryan (played by Chris Pine), in a terrorist thriller not based on a Clancy original. The film, titled Moscow, is planning to start shooting by the end of the year for a November 2011 release. Would the studio push forward with two “Ryanverse” stories, even if Jack Ryan isn’t in “Remorse?” I don’t see why not, but it means an even longer wait for a movie version of my personal favorite Clancy novel, “Rainbow Six.”

The Australian screenwriter is in his home country this month, promoting the September 2 release of his directorial debut Tomorrow, When the War Began, a sort of Red Dawn story about a group of teenagers who take up arms when their homes are invaded.

Beattie’s more recognizable credits include the original story and characters for the Pirates of the Carribean trilogy, Tom Cruise’s taxi passenger thriller Collateral, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. He also wrote the script to two now defunct video game adaptations: Gears of War and Halo.

Source: News In Film