'Alex Cross' May Join Jack Ryan, Jack Reacher And Harry Bosch At Amazon, Cornering The "TV For Dads" Market

Amazon already has Bosch and Jack Ryan in their streaming library, and Jack Reacher will soon be joining them. But that's not stopping the streaming service from collecting another show that your Dad won't be able to get enough of.

Alex Cross, the detective, FBI agent, and psychologist who leads a series of books by author James Patterson is being lined up to get his own series at Amazon. The streamer has the project in development in collaboration with Skydance Television and Paramount Television Studios, which are also behind the Jack Ryan series and forthcoming Jack Reacher adaptation.Variety has word on the Alex Cross TV series in development at Amazon. James Patterson and Bill Robinson are on board as executive producers through their own production banner while David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Marcy Ross are executive producing for Skydance.

It's early days on the Alex Cross TV series, so it's not clear if the series will be adapting a single book featuring the character for an entire season or if it will use multiple stories from several books to flesh out the show. There are 29 books starring the character, so there's a lot to choose from. But the series could also easily go in entirely different direction and use the character to lead a crime procedural kind of show.

Alex Cross has previously only appeared in movies. Morgan Freeman played the character in Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider, which might preclude those stories from being part of the new series, if only for the sake of treading new territory. Plus, Tyler Perry played Alex Cross in a self-titled movie from 2012 (seen above), based on the novel Cross.

The question is who should play Alex Cross this time? I wouldn't mind seeing Winston Duke (Black Panther) in a role like this, or maybe Corey Hawkins (Straight Outta Compton) since the reboot of 24 didn't pan out for him as well as it could have. There are plenty of bigger stars out there like Chadwick Boseman and John Boyega, but I can't imagine them tackling television at this point in their career.

James Patterson is the kind of author who writes books meant to be read on planes, so it makes sense that he's heading to the same streaming home as Jack Ryan and Jack Reacher. Maybe Amazon can get them all together in one big crossover. It would be the most excited your Dad has been since he got that grill cover he wanted for Christmas.