Let us for the moment accept the claim at face value--that there is at least for the moment a really serious interest in getting the film made rather than this just being a rumor. This would seem to me to bespeak three aspects of the situation in Hollywood as it stands.
1. Hollywood has been facing some desperate times lately, with the pandemic's battering of moviegoing, the idiotic expenditures on streaming far beyond anything justified by its financial prospects, and the faltering of so many of those huge franchises on which it has counted to pay the bills (Disney's Star Wars franchise stalling out, with the MCU showing signs of going the same way, Warner Bros. troubles with Fantastic Beasts and the DCEU, etc., etc.). One option was to get creative. The other was to do more of what was already not working. And Hollywood predictably did the latter, its inability to let any franchise alone gone into overdrive--such that even with a Jack Ryan series currently a hit on Amazon (with its fourth season not yet even aired!) they are already talking about reverting to an earlier part of the franchise history by (apparently) continuing from the movies of the '90s.
2. Top Gun 2 has made a big impression on Hollywood--and it would be unlikely that this has not driven some to attempt imitation, the more in as so many are sure that Top Gun 2's extreme overperformance was testament to nothing but the attractions of the film itself, even if not everyone agreed on what exactly in it worked the magic.* Clearly some interpreted it as evidence of an audience for more exploitation of the '80s nostalgia that a little while ago seemed on its way out. Still others have interpreted it as indicative of an unmet appetite for jingoistic military adventure. And some have even seen it as a reaffirmation of the old-fashioned star vehicle. A Jack Ryan movie starring Harrison Ford (who is Persona Non Grata in China anyway, so no loss there) could seem consistent with all that, the more in as
3. Harrison Ford's stock would seem to be way up in 2023 as a result of his recent string of roles--his appearing on TV in the prequel to the hit show Yellowstone (1923), his having another Indiana Jones movie on the way, and his joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the new General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross. All this would seem plenty to have the executives looking back at his very, very long list of credits and saying "What can we make sequels to?" Alas, Ford's Han Solo was killed in The Force Awakens, and Disney, of course, is already going with more Indiana Jones. Rick Deckard's second adventure didn't fly (and should not have been expected to as Blade Runner was a cult, not a mass audience, success, and did not even have the makings for the mass audience success it never became), so a third was out for the time being. That left the Jack Ryan character as the next most plausible candidate. With most of the early Ryan stories having been already adapted (everything prior to Debt of Honor in the sequence save for the already development hell-consigned Cardinal of the Kremlin, and the later, retro, choice of Red Rabbit unlikely for many reasons) and not exactly crying out for a remake, while the others Clancy wrote are not easily picked up without Debt of Honor's backstory (Executive Orders, The Bear and the Dragon), Debt of Honor was the one they went for, while I think they were attracted to the idea of a movie where Ford plays a President. After all, they had already seen him do so in the itself fairly Tom Clancy-ish Air Force One, which itself may, due to the same "thinking" discussing here, have already been marked for a sequel; while it seems Ford's MCU character Ross will be, at this stage of things, President as well. So why not the Jack Ryan book where Ryan becomes President too? So that they could have three simultaneously running franchises where Harrison Ford is President of the United States?
Yes, it sounds stupid, but then Hollywood is stupid, so there you go. The only question is whether the stupidity in question will or will not prove costly in this case--a subject for another post.
* For my part it has seemed to me very, very important that Top Gun 2 had the media cheerleading for it from the start in a way rarely seen for any movie (with the critics giving a movie that was basically a do-over of a flick they gave a crummy 57 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes a fantastic 97 percent score this time around); and that it faced much less competition than most summer blockbusters due to the small number and comparative weaknesses of the other big movies on offer (Dr. Strange 2, the closing installment of the Jurassic World trilogy, Thor, all it had to contend with). However, it is very clear that the commentariat has no desire to acknowledge any of that.
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