Kenneth Branagh Signs on for JACK RYAN Movie

According to Deadline.com, stage and screen star Kenneth Branagh will star in Paramount's upcoming Jack Ryan film. He joins Chris Pine in the film, and will play the Russian villain.

Branagh said of the movie:  “[It's] an original story that allows us to understand how Jack Ryan, created by Tom Clancy, develops into a CIA analyst, before joining, and perhaps even joining, the CIA. It’s a very contemporary action thriller, set in the here and now.”

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Branagh is no stranger to the stage. He recently completed a sell-out run in Belfast of a new comedy The Painkiller in which he co-starred with Rob Brydon; additionally, he starred in Radio 4’s epic adaptation of Vasily Grossman’s Life And Fate and the third series of the BBC’s hugely popular and BAFTA award-winning Wallander in which he plays Henning Mankell’s best-selling Swedish detective and which will be on our screens in 2012. Branagh’s cinema work as an actor includes roles in films he also directed such as Henry V, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Frankenstein, Dead Again and Peter’s Friends as well as Woody Allen’s Celebrity, Philip Noyce’s Rabbit Proof Fence, Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, The Boat That Rocked and Valkyrie.