Ritchson Says Die Trying Reacher Plan Was Shelved After Re-Election
Alan Ritchson says his favourite Jack Reacher novel was approved for television, then dropped after “someone got re-elected.”
The star made the claim on Threads in a short exchange about the future of his Prime Video series. A fan had said they were disappointed the show had not adapted “the book where he kills his way through a white supremacist militia camp.” Ritchson replied: “Fun fact: I had it approved until someone got re-elected,” according to Deadline. He did not mention Trump by name in the comment.
The book is Die Trying. Ritchson has named it as his favourite in Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series. First published in 1998, it is the second book in the series. The story follows Reacher and a politician’s daughter after they are abducted by a radical militia that plans to use her as leverage to secede from the United States.
For fans, this means that particular fight is not coming to the screen any time soon. The show has already fixed its next target, and it is a different case entirely.
Prime Video handed Reacher an early renewal for Season 5 in May, before Season 4 had premiered, an early renewal meaning the next run was ordered while the current one was still unaired. Season 5 will adapt Make Me, the 2015 novel that is the 12th book in Child’s series. In that story, Reacher travels to the Midwestern town of Mother’s Rest and teams with private investigator Michelle Chang to search for her missing colleague.
Season 4 is still on the way. Christopher Rodriguez-Marquette joined that season opposite Ritchson in a recasting, as reported by Deadline. The previous run, Season 3, centred on Reacher’s attempt to rescue an undercover DEA informant from a vast criminal enterprise, according to Amazon MGM Studios.
Ritchson has headlined the adaptation since its launch and spoke to The Hollywood Reporter ahead of Season 2 about why the Prime Video series had become a phenomenon. That interview was published in December 2023 and traced the show’s jump from page to screen. For now, the page it will not turn is Die Trying.
