Chris Pine to be the new Jack Ryan?

Worlds collide and the sky collapses, as Captain Kirk becomes Indiana Jones! Well, the new Star Trek's Kirk, Chris Pine, is rumoured to be taking on the Jack Ryan mantle, the role made famous by Harrison Ford. No, you're right, that's not as exciting as I made it sound.

Since Pine's charismatic/cocky turn in JJ Abrams' sci-fi reboot, he's been linked to several projects, and is currently filming Tony Scott's Unstoppable with Denzel Washington, but now Variety has reported that he is in talks to reboot another franchise for Paramount, as Tom Clancy's CIA action hero.

He is in fine company, following in the footsteps of Alec Baldwin in The Hunt For Red October, and of course Harrison Ford in Patriot Games and Clear And Present Danger... oh, and then Ben Affleck ruined the fun for everyone in The Sum Of All Fears.

Still, all the more reason to give Jack Ryan a funky, fresh, just-out-of-college look and send him off in the face of danger. Expect to see him dodging explosions in Converse trainers while listening to his iPod shuffle.

And of course the great news for Paramount, who own the rights to both the Jack Ryan and Star Trek franchises, is that they can keep a close eye on the budding star and make sure that the two commitments don't clash.

So now that the studio has a monopoly on the Next Big Thing's immediate future career, presumably all that's left for them to do is build a small Chris Pine marionette, jerk him about a bit and say "Dance for me, puppet boy! Dance for me! Mwah-ha-ha-ha!"