Lee Child & Nick Santora on Bringing ‘Reacher’ to Life on Prime Video (VIDEO)
What better way to celebrate Reacher‘s (very fast!) renewal than with insight into the lead character and series from author Lee Child and writer, executive producer, and showrunner Nick Santora?
The Prime Video series dropped its eight-episode first season, based on Child’s first Jack Reacher novel, Killing Floor, on Friday, February 4 (with the pickup coming three days later). Child enjoys the “luxury to have that time to tell a story,” he says while sitting down with Santora to chat with TV Insider. “But also it’s like danger because that’s a lot of minutes and they better all be good.”
In terms of the level of control he wanted as an author whose work was being adapted for television, what was important to him was “working with people I like, whose work I admire and who I trust. If you get those three things in place, then the author has no worries at all.”
As for Santora, “I’m just taking what’s in the books and putting it in script format, with an incredible writing team,” he says. “You will not see anything in a show that Lee Child thinks is wrong, period. This is his world.”
Casting the titular veteran military police investigator was, of course, key, and Alan Ritchson delivered. “The first two seconds of the screen test time was determinative for me because Reacher’s got to step on the screen and if you’re a good person, you got a sense that he’s gonna be a friend. If you’ve got something to hide, you got a sense he’s gonna be your worst nightmare,” Child explains.
Watch the video interview above for more from Child and Santora on bringing Reacher to Prime Video.
Reacher, Season 1, Streaming Now, Prime Video
