By India McCarty
From 30 bestselling novels to mega-popular movies and TV adaptations, Lee and Andrew Child’s Reacher franchise is more popular than ever!
“Reacher as a character is the itinerant, the mysterious stranger, the noble loner and that has reappeared throughout human history,” Lee, who started the series in 1997, told PEOPLE. “And what’s really interesting about it is the history of human narrative has always featured that character.”
Andrew, Lee’s brother and co-author since 2020, added, “There’s obvious parallels in people’s everyday life as well. You know, everybody has frustrations. Everybody has something that is annoying them or overwhelming them that they can’t personally deal with because either they don’t have the resources, or they can’t deal with it in the way they would like to, because if they did, they’d wind up in jail or fired, or divorced or whatever.”
The brothers have teamed up for the 30th installment in the series, Exit Strategy, but Lee told USA Today the book is “all [Andrew’s].”
Related: Everything We Know About REACHER Season 4
“I really felt this responsibility with it being the 30th, this landmark, this milestone,” Andrew shared. “I really wanted it to ring the truest, the most authentic Reacher.”
The books are more popular than ever, and REACHER, the Prime Video series based on the novels, is just as successful.
“To me, [the series] feels exactly like the book, except of course, practically everything is different,” Lee told PEOPLE. “Because with the stories, especially, so much of it is in Reach’s head.”
He continued, “The story is ours. The characters are ours, but the screenwriter has to interpret that for the television viewer as opposed to the book reader. So it feels the same to me, and I’m very satisfied with it, really happy with it. But I do respect the art that goes into it after my involvement has finished.”
Andrew is not as involved with REACHER, but told the Meridian Star he prefers it that way.
“Before [Lee] was writing he worked in television,” Andrew explained. “And he really feels like he’s back home with TV. I think completing the circle feels very, very natural. And on top of that, I think it works nicely with the two of us involved: If he takes the lead with TV now, I’ll take the lead with the novels. So, it’s a good kind of division of labor for us.”
Whether it’s between the pages of a book or on your TV screen, it seems like the world can’t get enough of Jack Reacher!
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