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The studio has circled a December 25, 2013 release day for its new (and still untitled) Jack Ryan movie.

Kevin Costner will star in the still-untitled new Jack Ryan movie as well as the proposed Without Remorse spinoff feature. According to the website Deadline, Costner will play a new character named William Harper who mentors both Jack Ryan and John Clark, the CIA operative who is the lead in Without Remorse. Furthermore, Deadline states that Paramount wants to secure The Dark Knight Rises' Tom Hardy to play Clark in that second film.

Keira Knightly is in talks to play the role of Jack Ryan's wife in the new picture. The Pirates of the Caribbean actress is in advanced talks with the studio, and if a deal can be reached she would be the fourth actress to play the part of Caroline.

Evangeline Lilly (Lost) and Felicity Jones (Like Crazy) also auditioned for the part but director Kenneth Branagh liked Knightly's take on the character the best.

Thor director Kenneth Branagh is now in talks to direct the Jack Ryan reboot at Paramount.

The studio started talks with the English actor/director after Lost helmer Jack Bender departed the project a week ago, after he spent over a year developing it. According to Vulture, Bender couldn't get Paramount brass to agree on what kind of Jack Ryan picture they wanted; the site says that producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura wants a straight-forward action movie while attached leading man Chris Pine wants a character driven espionage film. Screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park: The Lost World) couldn't find a common ground in the latest version of the script, and that's where we're presently at.

Prolific Hollywood screenwriter Steve Zaillian has been hired to perform an 11th hour rewrite to the Jack Ryan reboot screenplay. Zaillian wrote the script for a Ryan movie back when Harrison Ford was playing the role, 1994's Clear and Present Danger. He won an Oscar that same year for writing Schindler's List. Other Zaillian credits include Awakenings, Mission: Impossible, A Civil Action, Gangs of New York, American Gangster and the upcoming remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Screenwriter Anthony Peckham has been called in to rewrite the Jack Ryan script. He's a well established wordsmith who has done similar jobs for high profile Hollywood projects including performing rewrites on Warner Bros.' Sherlock Holmes and The Book of Eli.

Pajiba delivers the inside word on just what this Chris Pine version of a Jack Ryan movie is about, giving the world the first mention of the project's working title: Moscow.

When we're introduced to Ryan in the movie he's at the stage of his career when he's a financial analyst working for a billionaire, living in Russia's captial with his wife. Ryan's been out of the Marines for a couple of years but this movie's action takes place before his job working for the CIA. The billionaire has a plan to devalue the American dollar and he's using Ryan to do it. When the financial whiz finds out, the billionaire takes Ryan's wife hostage to force him to pull off the job, forcing the hero to find a way to rescue his love back, stop the bad and clear his name.

More story details and an explanation as to why this Jack Ryan story has nothing to do whatsoever with any Tom Clancy novels can be found here.

While speaking with Coming Soon about his new movie Invictus, producer Mace Neufeld also let slip the latest on where the new Jack Ryan movie was at. The veteran producer reiterated that the film won't be an origin story but that it's still planned on being a wholly original Ryan adventure that doesn't derive from any of Tom Clancy's novels.

"We pick him up when he's on Wall Street," explained Neufeld, "...[but] the Jack Ryan movies have never been action films. They're kind of 'thinking man's thrillers.' Jack is referred to as a 'water-walker' because of his ability to jump ahead to conclusions. That's very big in all the Jack Ryan films and that's how we want to portray him. He's a teacher. He's a historian. He's a linguist. And he's really smart."

Neufeld also said that Adam Cozad would soon begin performing a rewrite on Hossein Amini's first draft.

Chris Pine (Kirk in J.J. Abrams Star Trek) is in negotiations to step into the shoes of Jack Ryan in the new untitled movie that's in development at Paramound Pictures. "Tom Clancy created an unforgettable character with Jack Ryan. With Chris in this role, we've taken our first step in creating a re-boot that lives up to the successful lineage of the franchise," said Paramount Film Group president Adam Goodman to Variety. [Full story]