Production is already underway on Paramount’s action sequel Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, but the studio has made room for another last-minute addition to the cast in the form of Robert Knepper.
Best known for his roles across Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters, The Day The Earth Stood Still and both installments in Lionsgate’s two-part finale to The Hunger Games, Knepper will assume the role of General Harkness opposite Tom Cruise et al., one described as “a man of power, experience, and authority who thinks he’s the hero and is not afraid to do what’s necessary.”
Technically speaking, when we met Knepper’s character in Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, he’ll be a retired general of the US military, spending his days as CEO of a powerful yet dubious private military corporation. Cue the fist fight with Cruise’s title star, then.
Rounding out the confirmed cast list are How I Met Your Mother and Avengers star Cobie Smulders, Robert Catrini, Danika Yarosh, Aldis Hodge, Patrick Heusinger, Holt McCallany and Austin Hebert. Fans of Lee Child’s seminal action series may already be familiar with the general overview of Never Go Back and what it’ll entail for Tom Cruise’s Reacher, though here’s a brief description of the novel in question.
“In it, Reacher heads back to his old military base in Virginia to take a woman to dinner who is now the commanding officer. By the time he gets there, she has been arrested, and Reacher finds himself being charged with pummeling one guy and fathering a child with a woman.”
Tom Cruise will step into the title role once more when Paramount’s Jack Reacher: Never Go Back hits theaters on October 21, 2016. The Last Samurai director Edward Zwick is behind the lens for this one.