Here are the reasons Dwayne Johnson didn’t get the Jack Reacher movie in 2012, despite his pursuit of the part. Lee Childs created the character of Reacher, who made his literary debut in 1997’s The Killing Floor. The protagonist is a former military police officer who now tours the country putting things right. Based on his physical description, he reminds one of Dolph Lundgren. Since Reacher made his literary debut more than 20 years ago, it was only a matter of time before a movie version was made.
It’s fair to say that fans were divided on Tom Cruise’s choice to play Jack Reacher despite the fact that he is one of the most well-known movie stars in the world. While Childs at the time defended this pick despite the many criticisms, he was considerably more pleased with Alan Ritchson’s choice for Amazon’s Reacher series. Cruise’s height was only one of several things that were identified as a concern. Unlike Cruise, who appears as though he just stepped out of a Jack Reacher book, Ritchson completely conveyed the character’s passion and sense of humor.
Despite this, Cruise was well-received for his Jack Reacher films, where he employed several strategies to highlight the character’s flamboyant nature. Finding an actor that matched Childs’ description was one of the biggest challenges facing the Jack Reacher movie, which was based on the book One Shot. In the 1980s, the role would almost surely have been performed by Schwarzenegger or Stallone, but few performers from the 2000s onward fit that mold. One exception is actor-wrestler Dwayne Johnson, who has frequently acted alongside Kevin Hart and has the physique and personality of Reacher down. Johnson said in 2017 that he sought out and attended an audition for the role, but Cruise ultimately won it.
Johnson playing Jack Reacher might seem like a no-brainer right now, but it’s crucial to keep in mind where he was in his career at the time. Johnson was hailed as a rising action star in movies like The Scorpion King and Doom, but a string of duds forced him to switch to comedies like The Tooth Fairy. Although his potential was undeniable, he still hadn’t landed his big-break role. That would happen in 2011’s Fast Five, in which he portrayed Hobbs, a DSS agent who was ferociously following Dom’s racing team.
Johnson was the ideal choice for the part, and he went on to star in a number of sequels and blockbusters like San Andreas and the Jumanji movies. He was coming off a lengthy run of comedies and hadn’t had a significant solo action success in many years when he went in for the main role in Jack Reacher, which is available on Prime. Although he was the right match for Reacher, the studio evidently believed he lacked the star power necessary to start a possible new series. Johnson admitted that although he was dissatisfied at the time, he is now delighted Cruise got the part and that it was a learning experience in certain ways.