Jack Reacher's Creator Thinks The Prime Video Series Works Better Than The Books For One Reason

With his fourth season in production and a spin-off involving his good pal, Neagley (Maria Sten), underway, it's safe to say whatever secret sauce has been applied to bringing Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) to television in "Reacher" is doing the trick. Audiences are addicted to seeing the ex-military legend cracking cases, skulls, and any other object that would be an obstruction to us mere mortals. Following all this success, the original author of the Jack Reacher books has settled on a conclusion as to why Ritchson's world-shaking hero, who has a hunger for delivering justice in his own way, has become such a huge hit. After already struggling to bring Reacher to life with the Tom Cruise-led failed movie franchise, Child believes that it's the pacing of "Reacher" in a television format that has made him the hit that he is.

"My theory is that if you have a relentless non-stop pace that's the same thing as having no pace at all," Child explained in an interview with ShortList. "What you need is to show the differences; the quiet parts make the action parts even more effective. And so that was the thrill and the fun of doing a whole season on one story."  But while Child might be glad that Reacher is getting this long-overdue attention, he does wish that entertainment in this form had come sooner, thereby providing perhaps one of the most successful and effective ways of bringing a book to life in a way films can't.

When "Reacher" made his debut on television, he was released in a "binge" format, which is now a more common way of telling stories on TV than ever before. While the show switched to a weekly format after season 1, Child admitted that if this option had been available earlier, things might have been very different for some classic stories that were adapted to the big screen instead of the small.

"I think it is addictive for a novelist," Child explained. "I can guarantee that if streaming television had been around before, no novelist would ever have chosen anything else, because this works so much better." But even with so many brilliant Reacher books to pull from, is there a chance that the hero's two stories that did make it into cinemas with "Jack Reacher" and "Jack Reacher: Never Back Down," adapting "One Shot" and "Never Go Back," eventually get the television treatment?

Speaking to TechRadar about those titles, Child hinted that they'd certainly be on the cards. "In my mind, they're not done now. I would revisit them absolutely, but I think not as a matter of urgency. Let's do something that hasn't been done in any medium yet. But yeah, I would certainly do the ones that were features, but they're on the back burner, rather than the next one." For now, the next season of "Reacher" will be adapted from "Gone Tomorrow," which features one of the series' most shocking reveals. You'll see just what that turns out to be when the hit series returns sometime in 2026.