JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK Has A Director In Talks

Fans of director Christopher McQuarrie's 2012 thriller, Jack Reacher, can look forward to a sequel as of just a few years ago, and its lead star, actor Tom Cruise is set to reprise the role. McQuarrie directed the first film and has since been too tied up in finishing Cruise's forthcoming Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, as of last September.

Fortunately though, progress has been made as Paramount and Skydance have been moving forward for a second installation of author Lee Child's book franchise. The word from Deadline is that acclaimed director Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz are tapped to rewrite Richard Wenk's original draft with the goal of having Zwick direct. The first film is based on Child' 2005 novel, "One Shot", the ninth book in the series that features Cruise in McQuarrie's film as a U.S. Army Military Homicide investigator caught in a conspiracy involving the murder of five people. The sequel will head directly into Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, based on the eighteenth book in the series published in 2013 which Reacher returns to his old base in Virgina and takes its commanding officer on a date, only himself at the center of another conspiracy after his date is arrested and he's pummeling a guy and fathering a baby with another woman.

Zwick also directed Cruise in the 2003 period epic, The Last Samurai, as well as directed hits like Courage Under Fire and the time-honored cinematic Civil War masterpiece, Glory.

Cruise's Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation releases this July.