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Finally something credible comes out about the often rumored Tintin franchise. Variety magazine quotes Steven Speilberg and Peter Jackson on their plans for a Tintin trilogy. Jackson and Speilberg will each direct one movie while the third director has still not been decided on.

It is a well known fact that Speilberg is a Tintin junkie and had optioned the franchise in 1983.

The move caps a quarter century of negotiations involving Spielberg, a lifelong Tintin fan. He first bought an option to film the character just before Tintin creator Georges Remi — known as Herge — died in 1983. At one point, an agreement was in the cards, but Herge then read in the contract that Spielberg might not direct the films personally and refused to sign on the dotted line. [Link]

But Spielberg was not dissuaded. He paid homage to Herge’s work with references to Tintin in his Indiana Jones movies, filming in the same locations that Herge captured in the Tintin books. He also kept negotiations going with Herge’s estate.

And in March this year, it appears that the Herge Foundation and Dreamworks finally arrived at an agreement. But wonder of wonders, while these negotiations have seemingly gone for years, this announcement seems to have gone under the radar this side of the pond. And today, it broke.

In the past, Leonardo Di Caprio was linked to play Tintin. Comics Alliance even speculated Angelina jolie would play Tintin’s love interest. But Jackson and Spielberg now say that the trilogy would be filmed using “full digital 3-D using performance capture technology”, the same technology that James Cameron Robert Zemeckis used to make The Polar Express a few years ago.

“We want Tintin’s adventures to have the reality of a live-action film, and yet Peter and I felt that shooting them in a traditional live-action format would simply not honor the distinctive look of the characters and world that Herge created,” Spielberg continued.

In my eyes, the train conductor in The Polar Express had nothing in common with Tom Hanks, apart from his voice. So I still am viewing this with some trepidation. But Spielberg and Jackson are too good a pair to take their words lightly. So I shall be on a wait and watch mode.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 7:52 pm and is filed under Books, Movies, comics, media.