‘Big W’: John Krasinski might not be Marvel’s Mr. Fantastic, but he is relaunching another iconic movie franchise for Amazon

It’s been about a year since we found out nerdy star of The Office-turned-Hollywood hunk John Krasinski won’t be playing the iconic Mr. Fantastic in the upcoming MCU movie, and that still kind of stings. Fortunately, there’s something sweet to salve that wound – Emily Blunt’s husband will return as a different classic character: Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, and this time he’ll be on the silver screen.

The popular hit Amazon MGM show, which ran for four seasons, featured Krasinski as Jack Ryan in a TV show for the first time. Previously, the character appeared in five movies with four different actors. Alec Baldwin played the character in the 1990 film The Hunt for Red October. Harrison Ford took over the mantle for the next two movies: Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994).

In 2002, Ben Affleck played a “younger” Jack Ryan in the prequel The Sum of All Fears. Twelve years later the franchise was rebooted with Chris Pine as Ryan in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014). The idea for the Krasinski Jack Ryan show was that the classic character would deal with more modern issues not directly pulled from the source material.

The show was always only meant to last four seasons, and fans of the action-packed series were sad to see it go. Dry those tears though folks because Krasinski’s Ryan is not only coming back, he’s coming back bigger than ever. That’s right, Amazon MGM is developing a movie based on the show with series regulars like Wendell Pierce and Michael Kelly reprising their roles.

Season 2 director Andrew Bernstein will direct the film, from a script written by show writer Aaron Rabin, per The Hollywood Reporter. This news is good because Krasinski’s appearance as Mr. Fantastic sure got a lot of people’s hopes up. Krasinski famously appeared as the character in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, in case you didn’t know, is the leader of the Fantastic Four, one of Marvel’s oldest and most well-known, if not most popular, superhero teams. In the MCU, Richards is the smartest man in the universe, and he has the ability to stretch himself in superhuman ways. Interest in the group peaked after Krasinski’s appearance in a post-credits scene.

For a while there, specualtion was rampant as to whether Krasinski would take up Richard’s stretchy mantle. Krasinski even said he was not going to play the character permanently, but that didn’t stop anyone from hoping. Marvel also revealed it was a one-off portrayal, and said it used the elasticity (pun intended) of the Marvel multiverse storyline to make it happen.

As most people now know, Pedro Pascal will portray Richards in the upcoming The Fantastic Four: First Steps, currently scheduled for a 2025 release. Over the years, the world has had a complicated history with Fantastic Four movies. The property, like Spider-Man, was owned by Sony, and a number of movies were released under that studio. They were famously bad.

The first modern telling of the team came in 2005 with Fantastic Four starring Ioan Gruffudd, Michael Chiklis, Chris Evans and Jessica Alba. That stinker gave rise to the stinker sequel Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007). That killed the franchise for 8 years until they tried to reboot in 2015 with new actors in 2015’s super stinker The Fantastic Four.

At that point, people were so desperate for something that didn’t suck it makes sense that seeing Krasinski in a Marvel-sanctioned role would get everyone excited. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, you’ll have to settle for a Jack Ryan movie.