Update: Variety reports that Queen and Slim star Jodie Turner-Smith has also been added to the cast. She’ll play Karen Greer, “a possible love interest to Jordan’s character.” In the Tom Clancy literary universe, Admiral Greer (played by James Earl Jones in three movies and Wendell Pierce in Amazon’s Jack Ryan series) recruited both Jack Ryan and John Clark/John Kelly. Karen Greer could be a relative, although she doesn’t appear in the books or previous movie/TV adaptations. Our original story from September 17 continues below.
While most of us would probably rather forget that Fox’s 2015 Fantastic Four film exists, we’re about to see two of that movie’s cast members reunite. Former Ben Grimm/The Thing actor Jamie Bell is the latest to join the Without Remorse cast, meeting up with former Johnny Storm/The Human Torch actor Michael B. Jordan, who’s leading the new spy thriller for Paramount. Learn about Bell’s role in the upcoming film below.
Jordan will star in the Tom Clancy adaptation Without Remorse as ex-Navy SEAL-turned-CIA-operative John Kelly (aka John Clark), kicking off what Paramount hopes will become a successful franchise. Now he has some company in the form of his old superhero pal: Variety reports that Bell will play Robert Ritter, “the deputy director of operations at the CIA who was a major character in the Clancy universe and helped recruit Kelly into the CIA.” And that’s not the only reunion that’s happening on this movie: Sicario: Day of the Dead director Stefano Sollima is behind the camera, directing from a script by that film’s screenwriter, Taylor Sheridan.
Bell has starred in films like The Adventures of Tintin, Snowpiercer, Rocketman, and many more since breaking out as a child actor in Billy Elliot. He’s a solid actor, but definitely would not be the first person I’d picture in an authoritative role like this. For comparison’s sake, your dad may recall that actor Henry Czerny (Sharp Objects, Mission: Impossible) played the character of Robert Ritter in 1994’s Clear and Present Danger.
Michael B. Jordan’s John Kelly character first showed up in Clancy’s novels (17 of them in total) and has already appeared in multiple Jack Ryan movies already, portrayed first by Willem Dafoe in Clear and Present Danger and later by Liev Schreiber in The Sum of All Fears. But whereas those films put Jack Ryan at the center of the action and had Kelly as a supporting player, this one puts Kelly front and center. Without Remorse is an origin story, and the first Clancy novel to really dive into Kelly’s backstory and explain how the elite operations officer joined the CIA.
Paramount has high hopes for Without Remorse: the studio has already signed Jordan up to reprise his role as John Kelly in a Rainbow Six movie, which is supposed to begin production sometime in 2019 and will presumably bridge the gap between this movie and a host of other Clancy-related sequels.
Without Remorse blasts into theaters on September 18, 2020.
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