Beaks here...

Paramount could certainly do worse than to cast Chris Pine as the new Jack Ryan. They have done worse - i.e. hiring Harrison Ford to replace Alec Baldwin on PATRIOT GAMES while he was off playing Stanley Kowalski on Broadway. And since it sounds like they're planning to write a completely original Jack Ryan adventure (rather than further fuck up the chronology of Tom Clancy's print series), I can't imagine fans of the character will have a problem with twenty-nine-year-old Pine playing the heroic CIA analyst.

According to Variety, Paramount has "begun negotiations" with the new Captain Kirk to star in their Ryan reboot, which will be based on a screenplay credited to Hossein Amini (JUDE, THE WINGS OF THE DOVE, THE FOUR FEATHERS, KILLSHOT and the currently shelved SHANGHAI). Mace Neufeld, who oversaw the previous four Ryan films, will produce alongside Lorenzo di Bonaventura. There's no word on the plot, but I'm going to go ahead and guess that the villains will hail from either North Korea or Iran. As for a production start date, I can't imagine this film will get underway before late 2010.

Just be thankful they're not remaking THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER.