In a recent interview with Collider.com, the director of Jack Reacher, Chris McQuarrie revealed “I never expected Tom Cruise to be Jack Reacher.”

He explained that Cruise had originally been attached to the project “as a producer, I was attached as a director and I simply looked at the pedigree of directors that he’d worked with and assumed that I wasn’t on that list. So when I gave Tom that script, I was giving it to the producer.”

As it turned out, McQuarrie was considered good enough to be “on that list” and when Cruise called him back, he did so “as an actor.” In fact, Cruise wasn’t the only unexpected name on the cast list. The legendary director Werner Herzog also appeared in the film as The Zec . When asked how it was was working with him, McQuarrie replied “Just fantastic… It was really intimidating for about the first five minutes and then he was an absolute dream to work with.” On the subject of a sequel, the director said “supply meets demand. If the audience wants another one, we’ll make it.”

If the audience reaction mirrors that of the critics, you can probably expect a sequel to be commissioned. It’s scored a healthy 81% on Rotten Tomatoes so far and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone describes the film as “a dark and dazzling ride into a new kind of hell.” That’s a compliment, just in case you were wondering.