Almost ten years after his death, Tom Clancy continues to be one of the most adapted authors in Hollywood. Now Paramount Pictures has begun work on a film version of Rainbow Six, Clancy’s 1998 spy novel featuring CIA agent John Clark and his Rainbow anti-terrorist team.
The film will be a continuation from the 2021 film Without Remorse, which introduced Michael B. Jordan’s version of Clark. The Rainbow Six film will be reportedly helmed by John Wick series director Chad Stahelski.
While Rainbow Six was a major best-seller for Clancy in the late ’90s, that title is now probably most associated with the video game series it inspired. The first Rainbow Six debuted on PC in 1998, with additional versions on numerous other platforms including the original PlayStation and Nintendo 64. The first-person shooter games have continued to be published pretty much ever since; the latest sequel, Rainbow Six Extraction, was released just last year. While the games are mostly about multiplayer action, the Rainbow Six novel focused on Clark and his team’s attempt to thwart a biological attack on the Olympics.
Without Remorse was produced by Paramount, but they eventually sold the film to Amazon, who premiered it on its Prime Video streaming service during the pandemic. In my review, I was not wildly impressed by the film, saying…
It’s nominally a big summer action movie, but its workmanlike plotting and lean dialogue push it closer in tone and scale to something like Death Wish if it was set in the world of the military. It lends itself well to TV viewing, where there’s no pressure of a movie being ‘worth’ the price of a ticket, and less expectation that an adventure movie take on larger than life qualities.
Besides a premise that is more action thriller than revenge drama, Rainbow Six also has the benefit of wider name recognition. A couple generations of gamers love Rainbow Six, and with Chad Stahelski involved, they stand a decent shot of getting an action film worthy of the title.
