How Navy SEAL Author Jack Carr Got Chris Pratt’s Attention

So you had this plan to turn this into some sort of a series from the time you released the very first book? Yeah, from before that. And so what's crazy is that as I'm writing this, now they tell you not to think of someone playing your character as you're writing, but as a child of the 80s, that's almost impossible not to do. So as I'm writing, the crazy part is like usually you think of like Mark Wahlberg, or you think of somebody that had done these sort of things kind of before, but I thought of Chris Pratt, and he had just done, all he'd done is Parks and Rec, and he had a small role in Zero Dark Thirty, where he plays the seal. He has like a couple lines in there. And for some reason I'm like, that's the guy. Really? And I've seen him, I had no connection to him. And it wouldn't have been the obvious choice back then. This is 20, so I start writing in December of 2014, I think, or early 2015, somewhere there. So he wasn't this giant movie star back then either? Nope, hadn't done any of that stuff yet. And I thought, you know what, this is a likable guy. And he seems like an awesome dude. I'm getting a good feeling from him. And I thought, you know, growing up in the 80s, I love Magnum. You know, he started off as a naval intelligence officer, and then they found out about seals, the writers, they turned him into a seal a couple seasons into it. And like, everybody loved Magnum in the 80s. Women liked him, the guys liked him, you know, nothing not to like about Magnum. And he also does the first essentially what you would call a murder on national television with the other person not having a firearm or a weapon. And it's the end of I think it's season three. But the guy that had him as a POW in Vietnam comes to Hawaii, there's a little conspiracy thing involved. And at the end, he thinks he's walking away. And then Magnum asked him if he's seen the sun rise that morning because that morning when his friend gets killed, there's a sunrise. And the guy turns around. He's like, yes, why? And Magnum turns around and boom. And they stop it right there with this like fireball coming out of the end of his 1911 and they freeze it right there. And it was the first time on television in that prime time hour where someone had killed somebody else, the hero had killed someone else who wasn't armed. I forgot about that. But I'm remembering it now. Very controversial. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so I thought that's who I need. I need somebody who's a likable guy who's going to invest in this. And I heard he was like pro military and that sort of thing. And and Chris Pratt's the guy. And that's all that's all I thought I gave to it. He couldn't have picked a better guy. So awesome. And who knew he was going to turn into it with Jurassic Park and all he hadn't been passengers. He hadn't done anything serious yet. But I also thought about because I've been studying this since up my whole life. And I thought about in the 80s. Look what Tom Hanks did in the 80s. You know, he's in bosom buddies. He's in Dragnet. He's in the burbs. He's in Joe versus the volcano. And then he does something called Philadelphia in the early 90s. And he takes that risk. And since then, he's been able to write his own ticket. He's one of the greatest actors of his generation. And I thought, who is that guy in this generation that needs to stretch a little bit, that needs to do something different? And I'm like, that's that's Chris Pratt. He can do this. And so I thought of it. And then even crazier, before the first book came out, I met Thunder Ranch training, doing some shooting stuff up there in Oregon. And I get this call from a guy that I knew in the SEAL teams and he's like, hey, bro, do you remember me? And you know, you know, Jared. And he was out there in Utah with us. And he said, hey, bro, you remember me? I'm like, yeah, of course I remember you. How's it going? And talked to him in five years or something. And we catch up a little bit. And he's like, hey, you know, I just wanted to thank you for a couple of I was leaving the SEAL teams. I don't know if you remember, but you've had me into your office. You sat me down. You talked about transition. You introduced me some people in the private sector and I've never forgotten it. I was like, oh, wow. Hey, of course I'm gonna do that for you, because I mean, he's awesome, dude. Total stud, great operator and wants to get out of the team. So I'm gonna try to help him as best I can. But he really remembered it. And he said, hey, I heard you wrote a book. I said, yeah, it's coming out in a couple of months here. There are these galley copy things, which are early copies of a novel. I can send one to you. I'd love to send it. And he said, yeah, that'd be great. But I'd like to give one to a friend of mine. And I said, no problem. Who's that? He said, Chris Pratt. It's like, no way. Wow. Yeah. So he gives us Chris. Chris reads it. And next thing you know, he's optioned it before it even comes out. Are you a guy who believes in fate? Do you believe in destiny? So when I was in Ramadi in 2005, 2006, that's where I got to think about this a little bit. Because every time you left the wire, anything could have been an IED. And you could have either spent that time on the way to target and coming back from target, worried about, oh, is that dead donkey on the side? Is that gonna blow up and kill me or kill that, hit that Humvee in front of me? That piece of trash right there? Is that covering something else? Is that a wire there? You could spend every single mission, especially going to and from target and even on target, worried about that. Or you could focus on the mission, focus on the job, get there, do the job, get back. And at that time, I was like, you know, I think I have to resign myself to fate here in a lot of these things. Otherwise, my mind is going to be focused not where it needs to be. But on is that an IED? Is that an IED? And so I thought, all right, you know what? If I get blown up today, that's just that's just how it was. You know, everything we're doing, everything we possibly can to mitigate that. But, you know, it could happen. And I'm not going to spend an inordinate amount of bandwidth worried about that other than trying to mitigate it as best we possibly can. But that's not going to be the focus of my everything that I'm thinking about. It can't be. I need to be focused on this mission. I need to focus on contingencies. There's a firefight. I need to figure out what assets are available to come in here for QRF or whatever else, what air we have overhead. How do we how do we maneuver here? All those things. Like, that's what I need to worry about. What's QRF? QRF is a quick reaction force. So you have those set up at different places in case you get hit so they can come on in usually and like Bradley's or Abrams sometimes. Different vehicles that have a little more firepower than you do as you're sneaking through the streets. So so I kind of resigned myself to fate. And there's a book called The Bridge at San Luis Rey. And there's like I forget how many people, let's say five or six people that are on this bridge and it collapses. And the story is how each one of them got to be on that bridge. Why were those six people the ones that were on that bridge at that time? And it's fate. So so I guess I haven't really thought of it too much since then other than that experience in Iraq and just having to feeling like I had to resign myself to it. The Chris Pratt thing is eerie though. It's crazy. It's a little eerie. I mean, wonderfully eerie. Eerie may be the worst word for it. It's pretty amazing. I feel very fortunate. Yeah. And yeah, it's one of those things that you kind of maybe made that happen. Like maybe you kind of put that out there as you were writing it thinking about him. Maybe. I don't know. I say that and I say shut up hippie. Like oh, would you get a crystal up your ass too? You know, but that. Yeah. But we know. If I hadn't if I was like not I don't know. I mean I was you know whatever an average seal or whatever. But if I hadn't taken the time to sit down with Jared and like maybe Chris doesn't even know this exists today. Right. And other crazy part of this I thought of Anton Fuqua directing it. Real directing it. Yeah. Why is it why him? Because I love this train day. He did training day. I got the Oscar for training day. Magnificent seven. I knew he'd worked with Chris on Magnificent seven. I actually did know someone who knew him. But so I so I did have that connection through someone someone else. But I love Shooter which is based on the book Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter with Mark Wahlberg. Love that movie because I could I love the book so much. They made it more modern for today's time but it's a Vietnam sniper is a bobbly swagger who it originally is. But I just thought he's the guy. He's the guy to direct this thing and now they're both doing it. Wow. Which is crazy. That is crazy. Yeah. That's so weird man that you had those two people in your head. Like that's what makes me think I don't I don't not believe that it's possible to manifest something. But I think most of the people that talk about that stuff are full of shit. That's where it's a problem. Like most of the people that talk about that stuff they're trying to sell you something that well you know you can make your life happen and you just need a dream board and write all those things down. There's a lot of that stuff is horseshit because you got to do the work. Right. That's it. But part of me thinks that if you do do the work and you do have that focus and that intensity I feel like there might be some sort of frequency that you can tap in where you make things more likely to happen or possibly you can make things happen. But the thing is you like you only hear those stories from the people that are successful. Like how many people I wrote a book. Chris Pratt in my head. And then I said Chris. Yeah. And he's like get the fuck away from me. No it's totally crazy how all that how all that stuff kind of comes comes together. You couldn't have picked a better guy than Chris. He is such a good guy. He's such a great guy. He's almost weird weirdly nice. Yeah. No he's so nice. It's just different for around here maybe. I don't know. But he's very different in terms of like Hollywood actors. Like there's a few like him. Like you know it's like people love to say that actors are full of shit. They're gross and they're self-centered narcissists. And it's true a lot. Really. But it's not true all the time. And Chris is a great example of a guy who's like he's a very religious guy very pro-military very he's a really positive guy very very very friendly guy. He's not your typical actor. Yeah. No he's here. That's so great to me. Also a huge movie star. So it's weird. It's like he's not that you know guy who does coke and goes to parties and he's a different different animal. They do exist male and female. There are actresses that are great people. They just they just really genuinely enjoy acting. But for the most part the people that get into it are people that need a disproportionate amount of attention. And for the most part the people that need a disproportionate amount of attention are disproportionately annoying. You know. Yeah. And usually they like to get rid of the author right away when you option something because they're like I want to get rid of that guy because he's going to be on set and he's going to be like that's not my vision you're ruining my book or whatever. So they'd like to get rid of you. But Chris wanted me involved. So I got to help out on the pilot script. That's this thing. That's awesome. It is so good. Now is this a Netflix thing. Is that what you're doing. It's still classified. OK. They're doing some some announcement at some point but it's a streaming service. Oh that's right. OK I know what it is. I forgot. Yeah. So it's a 10 to 10 part series maybe something like that. Eight to 10 parts. I think so. I think they'll know exactly why. Yeah. Because if they tried to jam that you know it'll work. No. I do a movie. Well you don't have to anymore. Yeah it's great. People like show. And now he looks genius right. Especially now. Yeah. It looks like such a good move. Another crazy fate thing is because when you were doing that like when you were writing that in 2016 the streaming thing wasn't what it is today. Right. And even when we did the deal it was like a movie was kind of like that. That was early 20 2018 when we did the deal. And it's like well do a series or movie. So it's both. It could be both in the contract. And now and then they decided to do the series earlier on before covid even was on the radar. But now it looks like yeah. Genius move.