MovieChat Forums > Clear and Present Danger (1994) Discussion > Why did Paramount put the series on hiat...

Why did Paramount put the series on hiatus after this film?


“Clear And Present Danger” was pretty successful at the box office ($122,187,717 U.S. gross, $215,887,717 worldwide gross against a budget of $45,000,000), and was the most successful film in the series up to that point. According to the book “The Films of Harrison Ford”, Paramount was hoping to turn the Jack Ryan series into a tent pole franchise like James Bond. So why did Paramount put the series on hiatus for eight years instead of continuing to make more Ryan films? There were certainly enough untapped Clancy novels they could have adapted.

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Most of the other novels would not have adapted well into a film. The Cardinal of the Kremlin deserved one as it was one of the best written, but the end of the Cold War and the attempt to put the movies in modern day meant that would never happen.

Sum of all Fears was too complex if done right to put on film and the end result proved that. Debt of Honor? Executive Orders? Both are far too long to properly adapt.

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I think part of it was because most of the Tom Clancy novels after Clear and Present Danger start to get longer and more complicated with a scope too large to commit to film. For example, Debt of Honor is about a war between the U.S. and Japan. The Bear and the Dragon is about a war between China and Russia (and NATO). That's a hell of an adaptation to cover an entire war from its roots to beginning, middle, end, and aftershocks in a single film.

Plus (as someone else already said) a fair amount of Tom Clancy's works that were more focused around an individual like Jack Ryan tended to be set during the Cold War. So even though books like The Cardinal of the Kremlin or Red Rabbit may be easier to adapt to film, they're still about the Cold War and thus wouldn't be modern. The Sum of All Fears was set during the end of the Cold War, but it was "modernized" so that a nuclear war between the Russian Federation and the U.S. during the 90's or early 2000's didn't have as much sting as the Soviets versus the U.S. Plus they politically corrected it so instead of Muslim radicals it was Neo-Nazis, which could have possibly made the movie more relevant in a post-9/11 world.

Personally I think they should have done an adaptation of Rainbow Six. It's about counter-terrorism and the dark side of corporations which is something people would be pretty familiar with in today's world, and the scale isn't something that can't be fitted to the length of time for a film.

Can't be too careful with all those weirdos running around.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/6vy7on/whatever_happened_to_jack_ryan_movies/dm4aotq/

Ford is legendary for being very tight lipped about conflicts that happen on his movie productions but it is well known that he did not get along with Clancy. I suspect the conflict stem from the fact that Tom Clancy was never really happy with how his books were adapted and Clancy would let it be known.
http://ew.com/article/1994/08/19/harrison-ford-takes-tom-clancyagain/
Ford was attached to the Sum of All Fears, but ultimately he pulled out because he did not like the script.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2000/06/08/ford-wont-give-in-to-sum-of-all-fears
I have read all the Jack Ryan books, but not the Clarke Stuff or the any other of Clancy's works. I just grew past them. I have never been a big fan of the Harrison Ford Ryan movies. There didn't have enough action for my tastes and they certainly didn't have enough of the espionage. Then again neither of those were really the strength of the Clancy books either. What Clancy did best was illustrate military procedures and politics and put enough story around that illustration to make it entertaining. It is nothing to have 10 pages of Clancy book dedicated just to the type of missiles used. That doesn't really translate to well to a movie.

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Why didn’t Harrison Ford make more movies as Jack Ryan?

https://www.quora.com/Why-didn%E2%80%99t-Harrison-Ford-make-more-movies-as-Jack-Ryan

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That's sad. I really enjoyed Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan watching it back when I was younger and still do to this day. I think he was the best of the Jack Ryan's. Like a family loving nerdy analyst thrust into action not of his own will and see him kick ass.

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Harrison Ford Should Play Jack Ryan Again

https://screenrant.com/harrison-ford-jack-ryan-character-movie-play-again/

NOAH WELSH FEB 19, 2020
Harrison Ford has returned to many iconic roles recently, including for Indiana Jones 5, but it's time to bring back another character: Jack Ryan.

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Harrison Ford seems to have a habit of unofficially trademarking film roles, preventing other actors from playing those roles while simultaneously refusing to play the role himself, resulting in the death of those franchises which depend on the characters.

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I think they might have made more if they stuck with Baldwin. I think Ford might have even pushed for more himself if he had owned the character from the beginning as Connery had 007. I think it ultimately became a property nobody really wanted to bother with. I'd also wager that scripts were certainly bandied about, but they sucked. As some of these other comments point out, the Clancy-verse is really it's own alternate fictional history, and that's really a hard sell to normie audiences.

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Without Remorse 2 Should Bring Back Harrison Ford As President Jack Ryan

https://screenrant.com/without-remorse-2-harrison-ford-return-president-jack-ryan/

Without Remorse set up the perfect opportunity to bring back Harrison Ford as President Jack Ryan to unify the Tom Clancy shared movie universe.

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