Keira Knightley confirmed for female lead role in untitled 'Jack Ryan' reboot set to be released in Fourth Quarter of 2013

  

As previously posted here: Keira Knightley to star in 'Jack Ryan' Reboot with Chris Pine and Kenneth Branagh! Now, here's an update on the casting with Kevin Costner (who recently co-starred with Jena Malone in the multiple Emmy nominated hit mini-series HATFIELDS & MCCOYS) added to the cast, filming schedule, and a possible release date, and Keira Knightley's confirmation to star as the female lead, in the role of Dr. Cathy Ryan (opposite Chris Pine's Jack Ryan) in the upcoming and currently tentative title Jack Ryan reboot. It is reportedly said to be a start of a potential prequel trilogy! I'm liking these cast already! Filming is said to start in two weeks or according to Kenneth Branagh himself, who is both playing the villain and directing this film, "We start shooting in the beginning of September, and we’ll be shooting through until Christmas." (via his Collider interview here).

Deadline has the following exclusive details about the potential Jack Ryan prequel trilogy below ...

Paramount’s ‘Jack Ryan’ Resurrecting Tom Clancy’s Hero Finally Set For 4th Quarter 2013; Keira Knightley Cast As Chris Pine’s Love Interest; Prequel Story Starts Trilogy

EXCLUSIVE: Deadline can now confirm the cast for this long gestating, highly anticipated action thriller that will be the first of an anticipated franchise trilogy. It resurrects the popular Tom Clancy character of CIA analyst Jack Ryan last seen on film in 2002 and now played by Chris Pine in the role already made famous by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck. After various starts and stops, bad luck and good fortune, Deadline also has learned that Jack Ryan finally has come together for a release in the 4th quarter of 2013.

Paramount chose to wait for Pine to complete the second installment of Star Trek in this contemporized original prequel story that picks up Ryan before he joined the CIA. (Paramount long ago locked in Pine after he played Captain Kirk.) His love interest and the female lead is Keira Knightley. Paramount was intensely searching because it’s a high profile role — an older version of the character was played by Anne Archer in the Harrison Ford films — and involves options that would potentially put the actress in three pictures.

As Deadline previously reported, Kevin Costner has an invented but key role as does the film’s director Kenneth Branagh who will play the Russian villain plotting to wreck the U.S. economy. Paramount began talks with the Thor helmer to replace the once-attached Jack Bender. Paramount courted Costner to become a linchpin in not only Jack Ryan but also the spinoff franchise Without Remorse based on Clancy’s 1993 novel. (The studio is now courting The Dark Knight Rises villain Tom Hardy to star, with Christopher McQuarrie rewriting to direct.) The deal that came together envisions Costner potentially headlining his own film as William Harper, a true blue American idealist who recruits and mentors both Ryan and John Kelly from Without Remorse. Kelly later becomes CIA operative Clark.

Branagh recently described the movie as “an original story that allows us to understand how Jack Ryan develops into a CIA analyst, before joining, and perhaps even joining, the CIA. It’s a very contemporary action thriller set in the here and now.” its launching point is mentioned in Clancy’s The Hunt For Red October book and film: a terrifying helicopter crash that nearly killed Ryan when he was a 23-year-old Marines platoon leader and the only member to survive. Read full article here!