Cruise Stands Tall On "One Shot" Backlash

When Tom Cruise was cast as the lead in the film adaptation of author Lee Child's Jack Reacher in "One Shot"--The eyebrows of many who are familiar with the character were raised to say the least. The 6'5" Jack, beats the 5'7" Cruise by a lot.

Cruise addressed the criticism telling Empire that "Firstly, I'm very sensitive to it. This is Lee's book and Lee's character. Him giving me his blessing is what made me do it. If he hadn't then I wouldn't have done it."

"Lee told me that the reason he wrote him that size (6' 5") is because that was just one element to his character, and that opened the door to me playing him… Reacher is such a great character. He doesn't have a cell phone, he doesn't have email. He's off the grid. He pays for things in cash. People look at things through the prism of the colours of their life, but Jack Reacher does things the way we want to sometimes."

In this particular story Reacher investigates a murder that seems like a slam-dunk but turns out to be more complicated than he could have imagined. The crime involves a sniper arrested for murdering five people at a mall.

Rosamund Pike is cast as a tough lawyer and daughter of the discrict attorney. British actor David Oyelowo also stars as a homicide detective investigating the case. Richard Jenkins will play the district attorney prosecuting the sniper. Filmmaker Werner Herzog will play the villain Jai Courtney plays a highly trained sniper who is motivated to stop Reacher Robert Duvall will has a small, but pivotal role. Alexia Fast and Michael Raymond-James co-stars

Christopher McQuarrie wrote the adapted screenplay and directs the film

David Ellison and Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Gary Levinsohn and Paula Wagner produce the pic.

Cruise adds that he's used to the controversy over casting for films based on books, recalling the mid-90's when he was cast as Lestat in 1994's Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles.

Producition is underway for a February 8th, 2013 debut