Peter Jackson’s Tintin movie sequel might still happen. According to ScreenDaily, during a career retrospective session at the Cannes Film Festival, the director spilled the beans that he is in the process of writing the screenplay for the follow up to Steven Spielberg’s 2011 CGI blockbuster The Adventures of Tintin. While little is known beyond the movie still being in draft stages, Jackson mentioning it at all could be a positive sign.
Jackson is working with his partner and regular collaborator Fran Walsh on the screenplay, and things seem to be pretty positive.
He said:
“I’ve been working with Fran on another Tintin script, I was writing it in the hotel room here. It’s an active real thing, and I’m getting back into the Tintin world, and I actually love it.”
He added the reason why the film hasn’t changed hands or been passed off to another director – a pact with Steve Spielberg during production on the first movie:
“The deal was that Steven directs one and I direct another. Steven did his film, then for 15 years I haven’t made mine. I feel very awkward about that.”
If it moves into full production, it would be Jackson’s first cinematic fiction directorial credit since the Hobbit trilogy concluded in 2014. In the time since, Jackson had spun off into documentary productions – partially due to burn out in Middle Earth. That said, we were told a sequel was on the way in 2012 and it had languished in development hell ever since.
Allegedly, Jackson – who served as co-producer on Adventures of Tintin (2011) alongside Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy – also assisted Spielberg on directing duties prior to The Hobbit starting production.
The 2011 movie made $374 million on a $135 million budget, received critical acclaim, and was a hit in many overseas territories – not least in India, becoming Spielberg’s best performing movie among desi audiences.
The Adventures of Tintin is one of the titans of international comics. First created by Hergé (real name Georges Remi) in 1929 as a children’s supplement feature in Belgian newspaper Le Vingtieme Siècle, twenty-four albums were made under the pen or aegis of Hergé up until his death in 1976. It is officially the most translated comic in the world and probably still the most successful.
So the good news is….it’s probably not dead. And legions of Tintin fans the world over will rejoice.
