Hollywood continues its love for Clancy adaptations.
Deadline’s Mike Fleming has word that Paramount Pictures is near to finalizing a deal with writer/director Christopher McQuarrie (‘Reacher,’ ‘Way of the Gun,’ ‘The Usual Suspect’) to adapt Tom Clancy’s bestselling thriller novel ‘Without Remorse,’ with an eye toward directing the adaptation.
‘Without Remorse’ centres on former Navy SEAL and Vietnam veteran John Kelly, a character well-known from several of Clancy’s novels by his codename, Mr. Clark. The book, published in 1993, is officially described below:
“John Kelly is still getting over the accidental death of his wife six months before, when he befriends a young woman with a decidedly checkered past. When that past reaches out for her in a particularly horrifying fashion, he vows revenge and, assembling all of his old skills, sets out to track down the men responsible, before it can happen again.
At the same time, the Pentagon is readying an operation to rescue a key group of prisoners in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp. One man, they find, knows the terrain around the camp better than anyone else they have: a certain former Navy SEAL named John Kelly.
Kelly has his own mission. The Pentagon wants him for theirs. Attempting to juggle the two, Kelly (now code-named Mr. Clark) finds himself confronted by a vast array of enemies, both at home and abroad — men so skilful that the slightest misstep means death. And the fate of dozens of people, including Kelly himself, rests on his making sure that misstep never happens.
Men aren’t born dangerous. They grow dangerous. And the most dangerous of all, Kelly learns, are the ones you least expect. . .”
Clark has been portrayed on screen twice before; Willem Dafoe played the character in ‘Clear and Present Danger’ and Liev Schreiber took the role in 2002s ‘The Sum of All Fears.’