The Last Samurai Filmmaker in Talks to Direct Jack Reacher 2

It looks like Tom Cruise will be reuniting with the director from The Last Samurai to work on Jack Reacher 2.

The actor has just wrapped up work with Oscar-winning writer and director Christopher McQuarrie on Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, which has been slated for a July 2015 release. He and McQuarrie have also worked on the first Jack Reacher film.

However, Jack Reacher novel author Lee Child confirmed earlier that the sequel will no longer be written nor directed by McQuarrie since he is wrapped up with Rogue Nation, and now Paramount and Skydance have found the right replacement - Zwick.

According to Deadline, should negotiations with Zwick pan out, he will be writing the sequel together with Marshall Herskovitz, who is also known for his work in The Last Samurai and Love & Other Drugs. They will base the story on the screenplay draft assembled by Richard Wenk (The Equalizer).

Cruise seems to have a history of working on multiple films with the same directors, as proven with McQuarrie and now Zwick. He and Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Liman will reportedly be working on the 1980s set drug crime and thriller called Mena, which has a January 2017 release date. It is expected that Cruise will work on Mena first before he heads on with the Jack Reacher sequel, which currently does not have an official title yet and will be released sometime in 2017.

The sequel will reportedly be based on Child's 2013 novel called "Never Go Back," which sees ex-military police officer Reacher heads towards northeastern Virgina, where he is planning to meet MP Major Susan Turner.

The two have struck up a relationship over the phone but they have never met. However, when Reacher gets to his destination, he is surprised to find out that he is being accused of a crime he did not commit. Reacher will be dealing with all that together with the discovery that he might be the father of a strong-willed teenage girl.

Given the premise, it seems unlikely that Rosamund Pike's character, Helen will be making an appearance in the sequel. Helen and Reacher seem to have developed an attraction in the original movie but nothing materialized.

Jack Reacher is not really a box office hit, but it did manage to gross around $218 million given its $60 million budget, and this is enough to urge producers to deem a sequel as a worthy investment.